Extra-Lightweight (≤60 kilograms), Men

The favorite in this class was likely Spain’s Francisco Garrigós, the 2023 World Champion and European Champion in 2021, 2022, and 2024, who was competing in his third Olympics. Georgia’s Giorgi Sardalashvili had won the 2024 Worlds and was also highly considered.

In an upset, however, the gold medal would go to Yeldos Smetov (KAZ), ranked only 22nd in the world, who defeated France’s Luka Mkheidze by waza-ari in the final match. Smetov won silver at the 2016 Olympics and a bronze medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Mkheidze was also a bronze medalist at Tokyo 2020. A native of Tbilisi, Georgia, he left the country with his parents in 2009 after the conflict in South Ossetia. Initially settling in Poland, their asylum application having been refused, they came to settle in France in 2010 with a political refugee status, finally settling in Le Havre, and Mkheidze received French citizenship in 2015.

Garrigós met Sardalashvili for one of the bronze medals and won via Golden Score. Spain had never won a medal in this class, and its only previous medal in men’s judo was heavyweight silver by Ernesto Pérez, in 1996. In the other bronze medal match, Ryuju Nagayama (JPN) defeated Salih Yıldız (TUR) by ippon.