The 2008 Olympic event marred by an assault on a referee was taekwondo. During the men’s over-80-kilogram bronze-medal bout in Beijing, Cuban fighter Ángel Matos was disqualified after failing to resume competition within the permitted injury time. When Swedish referee Chakir Chelbat declared Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov the winner, Matos argued with the officials and kicked Chelbat in the face, drawing blood. He also struck a judge before being escorted away.
The incident was especially shocking because Matos was an Olympic champion who had won gold in taekwondo at the 2000 Sydney Games. Matos and his coach, Leudis González, defended the protest and criticized the officiating, but the World Taekwondo Federation treated the attack as a grave violation of the sport’s rules and Olympic conduct.
Matos and González were banned for life from World Taekwondo Federation events, and Matos’s Olympic results were removed from the records. The episode is sometimes misremembered as a boxing or judo incident, but the assaulted official was overseeing a taekwondo match.