NAGOYA –
Japan’s teenage skate boarders delivered two gold medals and two bronze medals on September 25, with 15-year-olds Mizuho Hasegawa and Ian Nagahara profitable the ladies’s and males’s park competitions on the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.
All 4 Japanese skate boarders reached the rostrum, offering one of many host nation’s excellent performances on Day 7 as swimming concluded its six-day program and athletics, gymnastics, fencing and crew sports activities entered a decisive stage.
The day’s greatest confirmed successes got here at Aichi Sky Expo, the place Japan’s younger skate boarders dominated each park finals.
Hasegawa, the world’s top-ranked girls’s park skateboarder, received gold with an distinctive rating of 94.03 factors, ending effectively forward of Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yi-fan, who took silver with 85.15. Japan’s Misugu Okamoto accomplished the rostrum with 82.86 factors.
Hasegawa had certified first and instantly established herself because the competitor to beat. Her opening run included a profitable 540, a trick involving one and a half rotations within the air, incomes her 88.83 factors.
She improved significantly on her second try, efficiently finishing her signature front-flip Indy and receiving 94.03 factors. She was the one competitor to attain above 90, and no challenger surpassed her in the course of the remaining runs.
The victory gave the 15-year-old highschool pupil her first Asian Games title and strengthened her place among the many main contenders in worldwide girls’s park skateboarding.
Okamoto’s bronze was one other important outcome for Japan. The 20-year-old, who completed fourth on the Tokyo Olympics after falling whereas making an attempt a tough trick, had briefly stepped away from aggressive skateboarding earlier than returning to the game.
She recovered from an unsuccessful opening run to finish a 540 on her second try, scoring 82.86 factors and securing third place.
The males’s remaining produced an equally spectacular Japanese efficiency.
Nagahara, additionally 15, received gold with 88.96 factors after qualifying third. He opened with an error-free run price 87.33 earlier than bettering on his second try to take the lead.
None of the remaining rivals might exceed his rating, giving Japan a second park gold inside a couple of hours.
Nagahara, a third-year junior highschool pupil from Hakuba in Nagano Prefecture, is the youthful brother of Tokyo 2024 Olympian Yuro Nagahara. He had already established himself domestically by profitable the Japanese championship in 2025.
Japan’s Gunjo Shiji, one other 15-year-old, took bronze with 86.03 factors. The Aichi Prefecture native acquired enthusiastic assist from native spectators as he tried a number of tough aerial tips.
The mixed outcomes meant that each Japanese competitor entered within the males’s and girls’s park competitions received a medal, an distinctive final result for a crew composed largely of teenage athletes.
Swimming’s remaining day introduced specific consideration to 17-year-old Shin Ohashi, who was pursuing a clear sweep of the boys’s breaststroke occasions after profitable the 100-meter and 200-meter titles.
Ohashi had produced one of many performances of the whole Games on September 24, breaking the boys’s 200-meter breaststroke world file in 2 minutes, 4.83 seconds. His time improved the earlier file held by China’s Qin Haiyang by 0.65 seconds.
The Japanese teenager entered the September 25 males’s 50-meter breaststroke competitors looking for a 3rd particular person gold medal. He certified second general within the morning heats, securing a spot within the night remaining.
Rikako Ikee additionally returned to the pool for the ladies’s 50-meter butterfly after withdrawing from the 50-meter freestyle the day gone by. The 26-year-old progressed by the morning heats, incomes a spot within the night remaining.
Tomoyuki Matsushita certified for the boys’s 200-meter butterfly remaining, including one other occasion to his demanding Asian Games program.
Japan entered the ultimate day of swimming with 31 medals, consisting of six gold, 13 silver and 12 bronze, already exceeding its 30-medal complete from the earlier Asian Games.
The remaining night featured seven medal occasions, together with the ladies’s 800-meter freestyle, males’s 200-meter backstroke, males’s 400-meter freestyle and girls’s 4×100-meter medley relay.
Artistic gymnastics additionally reached its remaining day at Nagoya’s Rainbow Hall, with 5 equipment titles to be determined.
Olympic champion Shinnosuke Oka was entered within the males’s parallel bars and horizontal bar finals, whereas Shoma Tsukiyama was additionally competing on the horizontal bar. Aiko Sugihara, Japan’s girls’s all-around gold medalist, was contesting the steadiness beam and ground train.
Japan had already loved a productive gymnastics competitors, together with Sugihara’s historic particular person all-around victory, silver medals in each crew occasions and several other equipment medals.
In fencing, Japan’s males’s foil crew started its marketing campaign with a chance so as to add one other title following the nation’s particular person success earlier within the Games. Kazuki Iimura and Kyosuke Matsuyama had been among the many main Japanese rivals because the crew competitors moved by its knockout rounds.
The girls’s epee crew was additionally competing, with each crew finals scheduled for September 25.
Athletics reached one among its most anticipated evenings, with the boys’s and girls’s 100-meter semifinals and finals at Mizuho Park in Nagoya.
Japanese nationwide champion Shuhei Tada had certified for the boys’s semifinals after operating 10.41 seconds in his opening warmth on September 24. Yuki Koike additionally progressed, recording 10.33.
Thailand’s Puripol Boonson established himself as a significant contender by clocking 9.95 seconds within the heats, the one athlete to interrupt 10 seconds in the course of the opening spherical.
Japan entered the competitors looking for its first males’s 100-meter Asian Games gold medal since Koji Ito’s victory on the 1998 Bangkok Games.
In the ladies’s competitors, Midori Mikase and Fuuka Ido-Abigail had been amongst Japan’s representatives.
The athletics program additionally included the boys’s 10,000 meters, girls’s pole vault, girls’s shot put, males’s hammer throw and the conclusion of the ladies’s heptathlon.
Japan suffered a setback earlier than the boys’s 10,000 meters when Mebuki Suzuki withdrew after contracting influenza. The 25-year-old Toyota athlete had been chosen for the occasion alongside Yamato Yoshii.
In girls’s hockey, Japan misplaced 3-1 to India in its preliminary-round match, a major lead to a contest that includes a number of of Asia’s strongest nationwide groups.
The Japanese girls’s facet had opened its marketing campaign with commanding victories over Indonesia and Singapore, however India offered significantly stronger opposition.
Japan’s girls’s soccer crew, in the meantime, confronted the Philippines within the quarterfinals at Shizuoka Stadium Ecopa on September 25.
Nadeshiko Japan entered the knockout stage with an ideal file after defeating Thailand 8-0, Vietnam 8-0 and Chinese Taipei 4-0 within the group stage.
The crew is making an attempt to win a 3rd consecutive Asian Games girls’s soccer championship.
Basketball additionally moved into its decisive levels, with Japan’s girls’s nationwide crew competing within the semifinals after profitable all three preliminary matches and defeating Thailand 86-29 within the quarterfinals.
Japan had beforehand overwhelmed Hong Kong 114-37, Kazakhstan 88-23 and the Philippines 89-67. The crew is pursuing its first Asian Games girls’s basketball gold since 1998.
Baseball offered one other main Japan-Korea encounter as the 2 nations met within the opening recreation of the Super Round at Toyohashi Municipal Stadium.
Japan had superior unbeaten by the preliminary stage, defeating China 11-3, Palestine 15-0 and the Philippines 7-0.
South Korea additionally entered the Super Round with three victories, having defeated Chinese Taipei 5-0, Hong Kong 13-0 and Thailand 18-1.
The recreation carried important implications for qualification for the September 27 gold-medal contest. Japan is looking for its first Asian Games baseball championship since 1994.
The hosts are scheduled to face Chinese Taipei of their remaining Super Round recreation on September 26.
Table tennis continued its particular person competitions following Japan’s historic victory over China within the males’s crew remaining on September 24.
Tomokazu Harimoto and Sora Matsushima had led Japan to a 3-2 victory, ending China’s run of eight consecutive Asian Games males’s crew titles and giving Japan its first gold within the occasion since 1966.
On September 25, Matsushima partnered with Miwa Harimoto within the combined doubles, dealing with China’s Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha within the quarterfinals.
The Japanese pair, each youngsters, entered the competition looking for to increase Japan’s profitable desk tennis marketing campaign and safe one other medal.
Shooting produced a gold medal for India by Suruchi Singh and Kamaljeet within the combined 10-meter air pistol competitors. The Indian pair scored 484.6 factors within the remaining, ending forward of South Korea.
India additionally took silver within the males’s 50-meter rifle three positions crew competitors by Niraj Kumar, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar and Rudrankksh Patil.
Surfing started its Asian Games program on September 25, with Japan represented by Kanoa Igarashi and Connor O’Leary within the males’s competitors and Mirai Ikeda and Minami Nonaka within the girls’s occasions.
The competitors marked the start of one other essential medal alternative for Japan, whose surfers have established a powerful worldwide presence since browsing made its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020.
Japan additionally competed throughout boxing, badminton, squash, mountain biking, canoe dash, equestrian dressage, handball, kabaddi, seaside volleyball and esports because the Games expanded into their second weekend.
September 26 will deliver additional Japanese medal alternatives and essential fixtures, together with the baseball crew’s assembly with Chinese Taipei, the boys’s soccer quarterfinal towards North Korea and the opening of softball competitors for Japan.
The girls’s softball crew begins its marketing campaign towards the Philippines, whereas the boys’s hockey crew faces India.
With two gold medals and two bronze medals confirmed from skateboarding alone, September 25 highlighted the emergence of a brand new technology of Japanese athletes able to competing on the highest stage. The day’s swimming, athletics, gymnastics and team-sport finals added an in depth night program to an already crowded Asian Games schedule.