Larbi Benboudaoud

I have a soft spot for athletes whose stories live in the silver rather than the gold, and Larbi Benboudaoud is a perfect example. Taking silver in the half lightweight division at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, falling in the final to Turkey's Huseyin Ozkan, is the kind of near miss that lingers. Yet the year before he was both World and European champion in the same weight class, which tells me the loss was an outlier, not the measure of the man. Standing atop the world at 170 centimeters takes technique and nerve in equal measure. I respect anyone who keeps stepping onto the mat carrying that weight.

Name (English)

Larbi Benboudaoud

Name (Japanese)

ラルビ・ベンブダウ

Reading

らるび・べんぶだう

Born

March 5, 1974 (age 52)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Tiger

Origin

Dugny, Seine, France

Height

170 cm

Occupation

judoka

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A9%E3%83%AB%E3%83%93%E3%83%BB%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%83%96%E3%83%80%E3%82%A6

Tags

• Seine
• judoka

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.