NAGOYA –
Japan celebrated two landmark performances on Day 6 of the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games on September 24, with the lads’s desk tennis workforce defeating China 3-2 to assert its first gold medal in 60 years and 17-year-old swimmer Shin Ohashi breaking the lads’s 200-meter breaststroke world document.
The host nation additionally gained gold in girls’s breaststroke, silver in girls’s badminton and additional medals in rowing, canoeing and gymnastics as competitors intensified throughout greater than two dozen sports activities.
The victory over China at Sky Hall Toyota was one of many largest achievements of Japan’s Asian Games marketing campaign, ending China’s run of eight consecutive males’s workforce titles. Tomokazu Harimoto and Sora Matsushima led Japan to victory in a dramatic five-match contest, securing the nation’s first gold within the occasion because the 1966 Bangkok Games.
Japan had reached the ultimate for the primary time in 44 years after defeating South Korea 3-0 within the semifinals on September 23. The assembly with China additionally supplied a chance to reverse the results of May’s World Team Table Tennis Championships, when Japan had misplaced 3-0 to the Chinese.
The ultimate started with 19-year-old Matsushima dealing with world No. 1 Wang Chuqin. Matsushima took the opening two video games with aggressive attacking play and highly effective backhands, however Wang recovered to drive a deciding fifth recreation. Despite one other decided effort from the Japanese teenager, Wang prevailed to offer China the opening level.
Harimoto then leveled the competition by defeating 19-year-old Wen Ruibo in 4 video games. Shunsuke Togami confronted former world No. 1 Lin Shidong within the third match and misplaced in 4 video games, leaving Japan trailing 2-1 and needing victories in each remaining matches.
Harimoto returned to face Wang within the fourth match, with the championship at stake. He recovered from an early deficit to take the opening recreation 11-7 and dominated the second 11-4 earlier than resisting Wang’s try to mount a comeback within the third. His straight-games victory introduced Japan stage at 2-2 and arrange a deciding match between Matsushima and Wen.
Matsushima, who had narrowly misplaced the opening contest, took the primary recreation 11-7 earlier than Wen leveled the match. The Japanese teenager regained management within the third, successful 11-6, and carried that momentum into the fourth to safe the championship.
The victory sparked celebrations among the many Japanese gamers and spectators, with Harimoto describing the outcome because the achievement of a purpose he had pursued for greater than a decade.
The outcome additionally highlighted Japan’s rising energy in males’s desk tennis. Harimoto, Matsushima and Togami have emerged as a mixture able to difficult China’s main gamers, whereas the house victory offered a big achievement for a Japanese workforce that had repeatedly fallen brief towards its strongest Asian rival.
Japan’s girls’s desk tennis workforce additionally reached the ultimate towards China after defeating South Korea 3-0 within the semifinals. The girls’s squad, that includes Hina Hayata and Miwa Harimoto, was looking for its first Asian Games workforce gold since 1966.
In the ladies’s doubles competitors, Hayata and Harimoto superior to the subsequent spherical with a straight-games victory over Thailand’s Krapassorn Visitviriyakul and Passaraporn Wonglakorn.
The Japanese pair gained 11-2, 13-11, 11-9, overcoming a extra aggressive second recreation earlier than Harimoto completed the match with an aggressive forehand. Their victory adopted their rise to No. 1 on this planet doubles rankings after successful the Europe Smash event in August.
Miyu Nagasaki and Sakura Yokoi’s participation was complemented by Japan’s different doubles pairing of Nagasaki and Satsuki Odo’s teammate Hana Goda?
The different Japanese girls’s doubles pair, Miyu Nagasaki and Yuna Ojio, additionally superior within the event, giving Japan a number of medal alternatives within the particular person competitions.
In swimming, Ohashi produced a historic efficiency at Tokyo Aquatics Centre, successful the lads’s 200-meter breaststroke in 2 minutes, 4.83 seconds to interrupt the world document by 0.65 seconds.
The 17-year-old surpassed the earlier document of two:05.48 set by China’s Qin Haiyang in 2023. Ohashi had already shared gold within the males’s 100-meter breaststroke on September 21, making him a double Asian Games champion.
Ohashi’s achievement was significantly important as a result of he’s nonetheless a highschool pupil. His victory established him as considered one of Japan’s main younger swimming prospects and offered the house crowd with one other memorable efficiency following Japan’s sequence of successes within the pool.
Japan added a second swimming gold via 20-year-old Kotomi Kato within the girls’s 200-meter breaststroke.
Kato entered the ultimate after taking bronze within the 100-meter occasion the day before today. She was second on the 150-meter flip however produced a robust ultimate size to overhaul her rivals and win in 2:22.57.
Veteran Satomi Suzuki, who had gained silver within the 100-meter breaststroke, completed fourth within the 200-meter ultimate.
Japan additionally collected silver within the males’s 50-meter butterfly via Shoon Mitsunaga, who had gained the 100-meter butterfly in a Japanese document of fifty.56 seconds on September 23. Mitsunaga made a robust begin and remained in rivalry all through the shorter race however narrowly missed finishing a butterfly double.
Kaito Tabuchi secured one other silver within the males’s 800-meter freestyle, including to the bronze he had already gained within the 1,500 meters. Kazushi Imafuku, who took silver within the longer occasion, completed fourth over 800 meters.
Japan collected six swimming medals on September 24, together with two golds, taking the workforce’s competitors whole to 31 medals: six gold, 13 silver and 12 bronze.
Badminton delivered one other silver medal as Japan’s girls’s workforce misplaced to China within the ultimate at Ichinomiya City General Gymnasium.
The Japanese workforce had reached the championship match after defeating India 3-1 within the quarterfinals and advancing via the semifinals, guaranteeing a medal for the fourth consecutive Asian Games.
Former world champion Akane Yamaguchi led Japan’s problem towards China, however the Chinese workforce prevailed to assert the title and stop Japan from recapturing the gold it gained in 2018.
The outcome nonetheless marked one other sturdy workforce efficiency for Japanese girls’s badminton, with rising star Tomoka Miyazaki gaining priceless expertise alongside established worldwide gamers.
Japan’s rowing workforce additionally loved a profitable morning on the Nagaragawa International Regatta Course in Gifu Prefecture, successful three bronze medals regardless of the disruption attributable to heavy rain earlier within the week.
Tatsuya Sakurama took bronze within the males’s single sculls, whereas Tomoka Yonezawa and Chia Tomita completed third within the girls’s light-weight double sculls.
All 10 Japanese boats had reached their respective A finals after finishing qualifying races on September 23. Heavy rain earlier than the competitors had pressured organizers to compress the unique five-day rowing schedule into simply two days.
The outcomes gave Japan medals in three occasions and demonstrated the workforce’s skill to compete regardless of the unusually demanding schedule.
Canoe dash provided one other bronze medal when Japan completed third within the males’s K4 500 meters at Miyoshi Pond in Aichi Prefecture.
The Japanese crew comprised Masaya Tanaka, Akio Inoue, Ryuji Matsushiro and Yuzuru Sakai. Their podium end got here as canoe dash competitors started to distribute medals throughout a number of disciplines, with extra Japanese rivals getting ready for his or her races later within the Games.
Artistic gymnastics moved into its equipment finals after Japan had taken silver in each the lads’s and girls’s workforce competitions on September 23.
Shoma Tsukiyama secured bronze within the males’s flooring train with 14.566 factors, turning into the primary Japanese gymnast to achieve the Asian Games podium within the occasion in 12 years.
Tsukiyama, 23, had certified fourth with 14.166 factors however improved considerably within the ultimate. He accomplished his routine with a managed touchdown on his ultimate tumbling go and celebrated after receiving his rating.
The Philippines’ Carlos Yulo gained gold with 14.666 factors, whereas Kazakhstan’s Milad Karimi took silver with 14.600. Japan’s Daiki Hashimoto completed sixth with 13.500.
The outcome added to Japan’s gymnastics medal assortment following Shinnosuke Oka’s silver and Hashimoto’s bronze within the males’s particular person all-around, Aiko Sugihara’s gold within the girls’s all-around and silver medals in each workforce occasions.
The remaining equipment finals on September 25 will supply Japan additional alternatives, with Oka and Hashimoto among the many nation’s main contenders.
Athletics additionally expanded its program on September 24, bringing a number of of Japan’s main observe and discipline athletes into competitors at Mizuho Park in Nagoya.
The males’s and girls’s 100-meter heats featured Japanese sprinters looking for locations within the September 25 finals. Shuhei Tada and Yuki Koike have been entered within the males’s competitors, whereas Midori Mikase and Fuuka Ido-Abigail represented Japan within the girls’s occasion.
Nozomi Tanaka, considered one of Japan’s most distinguished middle-distance runners, entered the ladies’s 10,000 meters as the primary of her three deliberate Asian Games occasions.
The day’s program additionally included the ladies’s triple soar, males’s discus, blended 4×400-meter relay and the opening occasions of the ladies’s heptathlon.
The athletics competitors follows Japan’s silver medal within the males’s half-marathon race stroll on September 23, when two-time world champion Toshikazu Yamanishi completed second behind China’s Shi Shengji.
Cricket introduced one other essential fixture for Japan, with the lads’s nationwide workforce starting its Asian Games marketing campaign towards Afghanistan on September 24.
The match adopted Japan’s historic encounter with India at Sano International Cricket Ground on September 22, when the hosts pushed the reigning T20 world champions to the ultimate supply earlier than dropping by simply two runs in a rain-shortened five-over match.
Japan’s participation within the Asian Games varieties a part of a broader effort to develop cricket nationally, with Sano rising because the principal middle of the game within the nation.
The event presents Japan priceless worldwide competitors towards established cricket nations as the game prepares to return to the Olympic program at Los Angeles in 2028.
Women’s basketball additionally entered the knockout phases, with Japan contesting its quarterfinal on September 24 after finishing the preliminary spherical unbeaten.
Japan had defeated Hong Kong 114-37, Kazakhstan 88-23 and the Philippines 89-67 to complete first in its group. Miyu Okamoto scored 19 factors towards the Philippines, changing 5 of seven makes an attempt from three-point vary.
The Japanese workforce is looking for its first Asian Games girls’s basketball gold since 1998.
Meanwhile, the host nation’s participation continued throughout fencing, capturing, mountain biking, skateboarding, squash, boxing, wushu, seaside volleyball, sepaktakraw, kabaddi, hockey and water polo.
Japan’s girls’s water polo workforce confronted China in its ultimate round-robin match on September 24 after overwhelming Uzbekistan 27-10 the day before today.
The males’s hockey workforce was scheduled to satisfy Indonesia, whereas Japan’s girls’s and males’s 3×3 basketball groups continued their knockout-stage campaigns.
September 25 will carry one other intensive schedule, with swimming, athletics, gymnastics, capturing and fencing providing medals. Japan’s baseball workforce can even start the Super Round after successful all three preliminary matches towards China, Palestine and the Philippines.
The males’s soccer workforce returns to motion in its quarterfinal towards North Korea on September 26, whereas the ladies’s workforce faces its personal quarterfinal on September 25 after finishing the group stage with three victories.
Japan’s Day 6 marketing campaign was distinguished by the extraordinary achievements of its younger athletes. Matsushima, 19, delivered the decisive victory towards China in desk tennis, whereas Ohashi, 17, broke a world document in swimming and secured his second gold medal of the Games.
Together with Kato’s breaststroke victory and medals throughout badminton, rowing, canoeing and gymnastics, the performances underscored the breadth of Japan’s problem because the Asian Games approached their second weekend.