INQUIRER Sports

BEIJING -- A host of champions past and present saw their Olympic gold medal hopes go up in smoke on the fifth day of the Olympic judo competition in Beijing on Wednesday.

Ilias Iliadis of Greece, the Athens champion at -81kg four years ago, was the first to fall to veteran Mark Huizinga of the Netherlands in the -90kg division.

The champion from Sydney eight years ago threw Georgian-born Iliadis, whose real name is Jarji Zviadauri, for the maximum ippon score with a sumptuous uchi-mata (inner thigh throw).

But Huizinga himself lasted only one more round as Swiss veteran Sergei Aschwanden proved his undoing as he countered the Dutchman's uchi-mata with uchi-mata-gaeshi (inner thigh counter).

There was also a surprise in the other half of the draw where the 2005 world champion from Japan Hiroshi Izumi was stunned by Andrei Kazusenok of Belarus with kochiki-taioshi (running leg-grab).

The top women did not fare much better as world champion Gevrise Emane of France fell at the first hurdle against Spain's Leire Iglesias, a silver medalist at the European Championships.

The woman who beat her in that final in Lisbon, Italy's Ylenia Scapin, also crashed out, thrown for ippon by Cuba's Anaysi Hernandez with seoi-otoshi (shoulder drop).

Things were different in the other half of the draw, though, where reigning Olympic champion Masae Ueno of Japan reached the semifinals.