Ilias Iliadis
Gold medal, August 17, 2004, Ilias Iliadis, cat. 81kg. Athens 2004
18-year-old Ilias Iliadis won the first Greek judo medal in the history of the Olympic Games, while in the previous event in Sydney, our country was not represented in this sport. He fought in five competitions and in all of them he was really amazing, looking for victories with tremendous will, strength and confidence. In the final he defeated Morgan Davies (Australia), Ariel Sganga (Argentina), Young Woo Kwon (Korea) in overtime and Dmitry Nosov (Russia) in the semifinals within 1 minute and 42 seconds. In the grand final he defeated Ukrainian Roman Gontiuk, in 1 minute and 27 seconds, with tremendous tenacity. He won the semifinals and the final in just 3 minutes and 56 seconds.
The final ranking : Iliadis (Greece) Gontiuk (Ukraine) Nosov (Russia) Canto (Brazil) Azizov (Azerbaijan) Krawczyk (Poland) Wanner (Germany) Young Woo Kwon (South Korea).
Bronze medal, August 1, 2012, Ilias Iliadis, cat. 90kg. London 2012
Ilias Iliadis won the bronze medal in judo category 90k with his victory over Brazilian Tiago Camilo. The way to the medal: in the 1st qualifying round Iliadis defeated Slovak Milan Randl with waza-ari and moves on. In the round of 16 he defeated Lithuanian Karolis Bauza also with Waza-ari, with one point and his opponent three fouls. In the quarterfinals, Iliadis lost to Kirill Denisov of Russia, ending his dream of winning the gold medal at the Olympics. The Greek judoka received two yukos from the Russian and now hopes to win the bronze medal in the repechage matches. In the repechages he defeated Australian Mark Anthony in just 37 seconds by Ippon, paving the way to the medal.
They said..
“I love this sport and I am so proud that I gave Greece the gold medal. My heart goes out to Greece and I am glad that my effort paid off. It is not an exaggeration when I say that I went into the Games thinking that I would win the gold medal. I was fully focused on my goal. I want to win more medals in the future, I am still very young”
August 17, 2004
“First of all, I want to thank God. He is the one who helped me to be successful from up there. Thank you also to my family and my coach. I did my best, thank you all. It’s terrible, I still can not believe it. For me it was as hard as the gold in 2004, I had no choice but to win. I want to dedicate this medal to my son Heracles”.
August 1, 2012
