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.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

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)

Origin

Bordj Bou Arréridj Province, Algeria

Height

170 cm

Occupation

judoka

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Tiger

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larbi%20Benboudaoud
• 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
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2251657

Tags

• Bordj Bou Arréridj Province
• judoka

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.