Middleweight (≤70 kilograms), Women

Barbara Matić of Croatia was world ranked #1 coming into Paris 2024. She was the 2021 and 2022 World Champion and had won the recent 2024 European Championship. The defending gold medalist was Japan’s Chizuru Arai, but she had retired and would not defend the title. Ranked second in the world was Dutchwoman Sanne van Dijke, who won a bronze medal in the class at Tokyo 2020 and added bronze medals at the 2021 and 2022 World Championships.

Matić was unchallenged in Paris, winning all her early rounds by ippon, and then defeating Germany’s Miriam Butkereit by waza-ari in the final, in a somewhat uneventful match.

Van Dijke lost her semi-final to Matić, and then failed to win a medal when she lost her bronze medal match against Belgium’s Gabriella Willems. The other bronze medal went to Austrian Michaela Polleres, who defeated Spain’s Ai Tsunoda by ippon, using sumi-gaeshi to win at 1:47. Tsunoda had been born in Spain to a Japanese father and a French mother.

At the 2024 World Championships, in May, French judokas went 1-2 in this class, with Margaux Pinot winning gold and Marie-Ève Gahié taking silver. Gahié was already chosen as the French representative in the class by the selection committee in February 2024, but she lost her quarter-final in Paris to Polleres, and lost again to Willems in the repêchage round, both by ne-waza (ground) techniques, eliminating her from medal contention.