In what year did judo become an Olympic sport?

Judo became an Olympic sport in 1964, debuting at the Tokyo Summer Games.

The competition featured four men’s divisions at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan, including lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight and an open category. Japan won three of the four gold medals, while Dutch judoka Anton Geesink won the open division.

Judo’s Olympic arrival followed a formal International Olympic Committee decision in 1960. It was absent from the 1968 Games but returned in 1972 and has been included ever since. Women’s judo first appeared as a demonstration event in 1988 and became an official medal sport at Barcelona 1992.

A common mix-up is treating 1964 as the beginning of all Olympic judo. That date refers to the men’s debut; women’s events became official nearly three decades later.