Shin Ohashi eyes world title after swim world mark, gymnast Carlos Yulo clinches career grand slam
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Japan’s Shin Ohashi celebrating after winning the men’s 200m breaststroke in a world record at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre in the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games on Sept 24.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- Japanese teenager Shin Ohashi broke the men's 200m breaststroke world record in a time of 2min 4.83sec and aims for gold at the world championships.
- Philippine gymnast Carlos Yulo won the Asian Games floor exercise title, completing a career grand slam of world, Olympic, and continental crowns.
- China have dominated the Asiad with over 75 golds, excelling in rowing, wushu, shooting, and mountain biking, while organisers faced criticism over athletes' cramped accommodation units.
AI generated
NAGOYA/TOKYO – Japanese wunderkind Shin Ohashi followed in the slipstream of China’s Yu Zidi to become the latest teenage sensation to set the Asian Games pool alight on Sept 24, shattering the men’s 200 metres breaststroke world record.
A day after 13-year-old Yu capped her fairy-tale Asiad debut with a hat-trick of gold medals, 17-year-old Ohashi produced a blistering 2min 4.83sec to eclipse the previous mark of 2:05.48 set by China’s Qin Haiyang at the 2023 world championships in Fukuoka.
It came little more than a week after Ohashi fell ill with Covid-19, which he said may have been a blessing in disguise.
“The world record was my goal so I’m very happy to get it,” he said at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
“My next goal is for the gold medal at the world championships,” added the teenager, showing why French superstar Leon Marchand views the Japanese prodigy as a serious rival.
“I’m scared. I’m very scared of him,” Olympic 200m breaststroke champion Marchand said of Ohashi earlier this week.
“He’s still so young. His coach is really good. I think his entourage, the people around him, are really good, so I hope he’s going to keep improving.”
Zhang Zhanshuo won his sixth gold of the Aichi-Nagoya Games after helping China to the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay title.
Elsewhere, Carlos Yulo, the Philippines’ first Olympic gymnastics champion, added an Asian Games title to his trophy cabinet with victory in the floor exercise, and felt redemption after disappointment at Jakarta-Palembang 2018.
Yulo, who honed his craft in Japan on a scholarship from the local Olympic committee, scored 14.666 to edge out Kazakhstan’s Milad Karimi (14.600) in a cliffhanger, with Japan’s Shoma Tsukiyama (14.566) third. His teenage brother Karl was seventh (12.233) among the eight competitors.
The 26-year-old was delighted to complete a career grand slam of world, Olympic and continental crowns.
“Having this in my collection, it’s all complete now,” he told reporters. “We can just relax and really hope for the best tomorrow.”
Eight-time Olympian Oksana Chusovitina missed out on a medal at the age of 51, coming fifth in the women’s vault final, 32 years after she took bronze at Hiroshima 1994.
But the Uzbek said Nagoya would spur her on to try to qualify for a ninth Olympics at Los Angeles 2028.
“Honestly, I get so much enjoyment out of seeing the crowd and stepping onto the podium. It brings me immense pleasure, and that’s why I keep going.”
China’s gold rush
Sporting powerhouse China continued their imperious march through the multi-sport event, breaching the 75-gold mark after five days.
They dominated the final day of rowing to finish the competition with nine golds and one silver and proved equally ruthless in wushu by sweeping all six sanda (full-contact fighting) finals they contested.
On the shooting range, Jiang Yiting held her nerve with her final shot to complete a hat-trick of golds at the Aichi-Nagoya Games. The 22-year-old’s poise and accuracy denied South Korea and earned China the skeet mixed team title, adding to her individual and women’s team victories.
China also commanded the trails, with Wu Zhifan and Liang Zhenglan securing a one-two finish in the women’s cross-country mountain bike final at Obata Ryokuchi Park.
On the shooting range, Jiang Yiting held her nerve with her final shot to complete a hat-trick of golds at the Aichi-Nagoya Games.
PHOTO: AFP
Away from the competition venues, the local organisers spent another day defending the athletes’ accommodation, after local residents added their voices to concerns over the shipping container-style modular units.
Organisers scrapped the original plans for a dedicated Athletes’ Village to control costs, housing 17,000 athletes and officials across a mix of hotels, the container-style modular units and a chartered cruise ship instead.
Several athletes have voiced dissatisfaction over the cramped dimensions of their cabins and beds – a criticism echoed by local citizens who toured a prototype unit placed near the Nagoya TV Tower in the city centre.
“Once inside, I noticed that the space was quite long and narrow,” 49-year-old nurse Wada, who shared only her surname, told Reuters.
Asian Games organising committee official Yuta Matsuo, however, maintained that athlete feedback had been taken into consideration from the very beginning. REUTERS