At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Lama qualified as a lone judoka for his second Chilean squad in the men's middleweight class (90 kg), by placing seventh and granting a berth from the World Championships in Osaka, Japan. Lama failed to improve his feat from the previous Games, as he received two penalties for passivity and fell in an inner-thigh throw (uchi mata) and a waza-ari defeat from U.S. judoka Brian Olson at the closure of their five-minute, first round match.