Georgia has a rich judo history with many Olympic, world and European champions but now it is going to be even richer. The women are coming. World and European champion Eteri Liparteliani is the trailblazer and there are more promising female judoka coming up. While the men became leaders in the sport, women’s judo was not taken seriously in Georgia for a long time. Until it changed. In 2010, Giorgi Tenadze was appointed head coach of the women’s program and the mission started.
“Obviously, that does not happen in one day,” Tenadze commented. “There was almost no women’s judo but our judo federation set the development of women’s judo as a priority.” The first results started to come in a few years later in the junior and cadet categories. “To say the truth, it was very hard at the beginning because we brought in children from other sports, from athletics for example,” Tenadze explained.
However, the work paid off and when Georgia hosted the European Olympic Youth Festival in 2015, they had two female champions in Mzia Beboshvili and Eteri Liparteliani. “That was a great chance to motivate the other children and parents to choose this as sports career,” Tenadze pointed out.
The introduction of the mixed team format that replaced the traditional women’s and men’s teams events, turned out to be the main catalyst to promote women’s judo in Georgia. “At that point, not only the federation but the government gave us the task to develop [women’s judo] and provided us with the necessary conditions for that,” Tenadze said.
“Historically, we have had some really good male judoka, and it would be just a shame for them [not to compete in the team] because there weren’t any girls. They would be world champions and wouldn’t be able to compete successfully in those team events,” the head coach continued.
The results started to improve on all levels. Georgia won the mixed team event at the European Championships and finally for the first time at the World Championships in 2025. The same year, Liparteliani became the first female world champion from Georgia. Finally,, the team received the Best European Mixed Team Award 2025 from the EJU.
“In the past two, three years, a lot of girls started to come after the success of Eteri Liparteliani,” Tenadze observed. “Now we have already around 500 girls practicing. I think we need a little bit more time and we will have not only good results from Eteri Liparteliani but many more.”
The future looks bright to Tenadze.
“We only have thirty athletes to choose from and select a [mixed] team that wins Europeans three times and then wins Worlds,” he said. “Now we have a great opportunity with 500 girls, and there’s a lot of talent there. We need to select the talented ones and I think it will be even easier [to be successful]. It will be easier, and we hope, of course, for the best, for our prospects to keep developing. That is our plan.”
Author: Tatjana Flade