The great female Olympic performances of China

Not many people realize this but China has got many Olympic gold medalists in judo. All of them are female and the overwhelming majority of them are in the heavier weight classes. Actually, the very first China gold medalist in judo is a lightweight. Li Zhongyun won a gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. However, many people don’t really count this as the beginning of the China gold rush because women’s judo at the Seoul Games was a demonstration sport.

Women’s judo became a full-fledged sport at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics where China’s Zhuang Xiaoyan won gold at the +72kg division (that was the heaviest weight for women back then). Her opponent was Cuba's Estela Rodriguez Villanueva, whom she threw with ouchi-gari and then pinned. Zhuang was also the 1991 Barcelona World Championships gold medalist in the Open Weight division. Her opponent then was also Rodriguez of Cuba.

Zhuang's successor Sun Fuming met Zhuang's old rival Estela Rodriguez in the +72kg final, and threw her with drop seoi-nage to win the +72kg gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Sun won a silver at the 1995 Worlds, a bronze at the 1997 Worlds and finally a gold at the 2003 World's.

After winning a gold in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, China won two Olympic golds in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The first one, the -72kg gold, was won by a virtual unknown Tang Ling, who won a close match against Celine Lebrun of France by a hantei decision.

The second Chinese gold medalist at the Sydney Olympics was the more well-known Yuan Hua, who was the 1999 World silver medalist at +78kg. Like Tang, Yuan won her gold through a hantei, against Cuba's Daima Beltran. Unlike Tang, who pretty much disappeared after the 2000 Olympics, Yuan would go on to become World Champion at the 2001 Munich Olympics.

Very few people realize this but China has a double Olympic Champion in Xian Dongmei, who is a lightweight, at -52kg. She won her first gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where she defeated Yuki Yokosawa of Japan, by countering the Japanese in newaza and then pinning her for ippon.

After winning the gold in a stunning fashion at the 2004 Olympics, Xian Dongmei disappeared from the international scene for four years. She reappeared in 2008, competing in just two events prior to the Olympics (Tournoi de Paris and Budapest World Cup), both of which she won. Then, she took part in her second Olympics, which was held in her home country. Xian won her second Olympic gold by defeating An Kum Ae of North Korea in the -52kg final. She scored a yuko with a scrappy leg grab. It wasn't the most elegant way to win but it was enough to win her the match.

That year was a bumper year for the host nation as it won not two but three Olympic golds in the judo event alone, with Xian's being the first. Two more would come from the heavyweights. Yang Xiuli won the -78kg gold by hantei in a very close match against Cuba's Yalennis Castillo. She almost lost the match when the referee gave a koka to Castillo in Golden Score. Yang had clearly landed on her front so the score was cancelled. Interestingly, when it came time for hantei, the referee sided with one corner judge to give Yang the match. After the Olympics, Yang would go on to win a World bronze medal and six IJF World Tour gold medals.

China's third gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics came from its very successful judoka Tong Wen, who was already a triple World Champion going into the competition. Her final opponent was Japan's Maki Tsukada, who scored first with kouchi-gari for yuko. With just 20 seconds left in the match, Tong dropped underneath Tsukada and threw her with seoi-nage for ippon. The crowd was ecstatic! Tong would go on to win four more World titles for a total of seven World Championships golds.

Note: In 2010 Tong was banned for two years by the IJF for taking performance enhancing drugs. However, in 2011 that banned was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which cited a "procedural failure" in the laboratory tests. "Tong's results at the 2009 World Championships are reinstated, she is to retain the gold medal won at those championships and she is to be reinstated to sports participation with immediate effect," the court said in a statement.

Interestingly, China, which won at least one gold medal at every Olympics from 1992 to 2008, failed to get any more gold medals after the Beijing Games.