The men's 80 kg competition in

taekwondo Taekwondo (; ; ) is a Korean martial art and combat sport involving primarily kicking techniques and punching. "Taekwondo" can be translated as ''tae'' ("strike with foot"), ''kwon'' ("strike with hand"), and ''do'' ("the art or way"). In ad ...

at the

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and officially branded as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes fro ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

took place on August 22 at the

Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium The Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium () is an indoor arena located on the campus of the University of Science and Technology Beijing. Construction The venue covers an area of 2.38 hectares and the total floor space of construc ...

Competition format

The main bracket consisted of a single-elimination tournament, culminating in the gold medal match. Two bronze medals were awarded at the taekwondo competitions. A repechage was used to determine the bronze medal winners. Every competitor who lost to one of the two finalists competed in the repechage, another single-elimination competition. Each semifinal loser faced the last remaining repechage competitor from the opposite half of the bracket in a bronze medal match.

Schedule

All times are

China standard time The time in China follows a single standard UTC offset, time offset of UTC+08:00, where Beijing is located, even though the country spans five geographical time zones. It is the largest sovereign nation in the world that officially observes only ...

(

UTC+8 UTC+08:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +08:00. It is the most populous time zone in the world, as well as a possible candidate for ASEAN Common Time, mainly due to China's large population, with an estimated population ...

)

Qualifying Athletes

Results

;Legend *PTG — Won by points gap *SUP — Won by superiority *OT — Won on over time (Golden Point)

Main bracket

Repechage

Controversy

An incident in the men's 80 kg competition may prove to have a more lasting impact on the sport. American

Steven López Steven López (born November 9, 1978) is an American taekwondo competitor, a 2000 and 2004 Olympic gold medalist (in the -68 and -80 kg divisions, respectively) and a 2008 Olympic bronze medalist (again in the -80 kg division) and 4 ...

, the two-time defending gold medalist in that class who had not lost a match since 2002, had one point taken away by the referee in the third period of his quarterfinal match against Italy's

Mauro Sarmiento Mauro Sarmiento (born August 10, 1983) is an Italian martial artist. He was born in Casoria, Italy, and represented Italy in Taekwondo at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's 80 kg, and won the silver medal, upsetting two-time Olympic champion Ste ...

. The referee determined that Lopez had used an illegal "cut kick" (blocked an opponent's blow below the waist). The deduction turned Lopez' 2–1 lead to a 1–1 tie, and Lopez lost in sudden-death overtime. Team USA's team leader, Herb Perez, unsuccessfully protested the decision, asserting that Lopez had raised his left leg in defense and Sarmiento had kicked into the leg in an attempt to draw the deduction. In the wake of the decision, Perez leveled serious charges against the sport's governing body, the

World Taekwondo Federation World Taekwondo, formerly the World Taekwondo Federation, is an international federation governing the sport of Taekwondo and Para Taekwondo. WT is a member of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF). The World Taek ...

: * He claimed that the protest was not properly handled. Typically, decisions on protests must be made within 15 minutes. No response was made for 45 minutes. * He also stated that the U.S. team received no indication why the protest was deemed "unacceptable". According to Perez, "Unacceptable could mean anything from we didn’t file the papers properly to we didn’t use the right color pencil... Under the WTF competition rules, we should have been notified about the decision, the criteria, the methodology used, what evidence was presented, and what referees were reviewing it. We were not." * Perez also said that at a June 2008 conference, the heads of the 25 teams that were to compete in Beijing were asked to sign an agreement not to file any protests at the Games. * After his protest was denied, Perez alleged that WTF officials approached him and asked him not to talk to the press. Charles Robinson, a writer for

Yahoo! Sports Yahoo! Sports is a sports news website launched by Yahoo! on December 8, 1997. It receives a majority of its information from Stats Perform. It employs numerous writers, and has team pages for teams in almost every North American major sport. ...

in the U.S., called the events surrounding Lopez' match "a chaotic episode that might ultimately prove to be the tipping point to Olympic doom", adding that it had been widely rumored that taekwondo was on the brink of being removed from the Olympic program.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Taekwondo at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 80 kg M80

2008 2008 was designated as: *International Year of Languages *International Year of Planet Earth *International Year of the Potato *International Year of Sanitation The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...

Men's events at the 2008 Summer Olympics