Middleweight (≤90 kilograms), Men

Georgian Lasha Bekauri was the defending gold medalist and hoped to become the second judoka to defend a title in this class, after Austria’s Peter Seisenbacher, who won in 1984 and 1988. Bekauri was world ranked #1 and had won a silver medal at the 2023 World Championships and a bronze medal in 2022. Bekauri lost the 2023 World Championship final to his countryman, Luka Maisuradze (GEO), but Maisuradze did not compete at Paris 2024 because he was recently suspended for doping.

In the semi-finals, Japan’s Sanshiro Murao defeated France’s Maxime-Gaël Ngayap Hambou with waza-ari by o-uch-gari after 3:33. The other semi-final matched Bekauri against his former countryman Tristani Mosakhlishvili, now representing Spain. Bekauri won when Mosakhlishvili incurred a third shido for non-combativity. Mosakhlishvili was World Champion in sambo at age 17 but changed nationality to Spain in 2020.

The final saw Bekauri defend his gold medal by defeating Murao after two waza-ari’s, one by sukui-nage, and then at 3:56 by ko-uchi-gari.

In the first bronze medal match, Ngayap Hambou won when Rafael Macedo (BRA) incurred a third shido for an “undetermined” offense, with only five seconds left in regulation time. In the second bronze medal bout, Greek Theodoros Tselidis defeated Mosakhlishivili. Born in North Ossetia-Alania, Russia, to a Greek father, Tselidis moved to Athens in 2018.