The Netherlands competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, from 13 to 29 August 2004. Dutch athletes have competed in every Summer Olympic games since its official debut in 1908. Netherlands, however, boycotted the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, because of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The Netherlands National Olympic Committee (Dutch: Nederlands Olympisch Comité * Nederlandse Sport Federatie, NOC*NSF) sent a total of 210 athletes to the Games, 134 men and 76 women, to compete in 21 sports. Baseball, field hockey, and men's volleyball were the only team-based sports in which the Netherlands had its representation at these Games. There was only a single competitor in women's fencing.

The Dutch team featured five defending Olympic champions: swimming stars Pieter van den Hoogenband and Inge de Bruijn, road and track cyclist Leontien van Moorsel, dressage rider Anky van Grunsven along with her horse Bonfire, and middleweight judoka Mark Huizinga, who later became the Netherlands' flag bearer in the opening ceremony. Star sailor Mark Neeleman, at age 45, became the first Dutch male athlete to compete in six Olympic Games since 1980 (except the 1988 Summer Olympics, in which he was selected). Shooter Hennie Dompeling sought his fifth Olympic bid as one of the most sophisticated members of the team, having missed the medal podium in the men's skeet from Sydney four years earlier. Among the Dutch athletes of the team, several of them were born outside the Netherlands and became naturalized citizens, including sprinter Troy Douglas, who competed for three Olympics under the Bermudian flag, badminton players Mia Audina from Indonesia and Jie Yao from China, and taekwondo jin Charmie Sobers from the Netherlands Antilles.

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