Olympics

Teenage athletes have headlined some of the biggest Asian Games triumphs, leading their countries to historic gold medals, breaking records and cementing their legacy as formidable forces in the field.

Far from being intimidated by competitors double or triple their age, these schoolchildren remained cool and unfazed as they cruised to gold at their Asian Games debut.

Many are already familiar with the pressure and expectations of the world stage and have dominated their sport all season.

Al Jazeera Sport looks at some of the stars who left their mark in Japan:

Yu Zidi, 13

China: Swimming 

At just 13, Yu was named female Most Valuable Player (MVP), as she bagged three gold medals and broke as many Asian Games records in a fairytale debut.

The schoolgirl stormed to victory in the women’s 200m butterfly, 200m and 400m individual medley (IM) and had a comfortable lead over her competitors.

Her time of two minutes and 6.10 seconds (2:06.10) in the 200m IM stands as a world junior record and second-fastest time ever.

“I don’t think I am what people describe as a prodigy,” she said after being crowned MVP. “I will continue to train hard, push myself and work alongside young athletes across Asia to inspire more young people to love and take part in sports, especially swimming.”

Zhang Zhanshuo, 19

China: Swimming

Zhang held up seven fingers after his 400m freestyle win to count out his gold medals at the Games – the most at this edition, and more than what 27 of the 45 participating nations had in their medal tally at the conclusion of the event.

He set Games records in the 400m and 800m freestyle, an Asian record in the 200m, and helped power China to gold and Asian records in the men’s 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relays.

But the 19-year-old has bigger victories in sight.

“The Asian Games is not the goal. I’m still aiming for the Olympics and competing with the best,” he said.

The teenager’s haul helped China sign off from swimming with 30 golds out of 41 medal events in the pool, with chief rival Japan a distant second with seven titles.

Shin Ohashi, 17

Japan: Swimming 

Ohashi broke the world record in the men’s 200m breaststroke (2:04.83) in front of a home crowd to become the first swimmer under the 2:05 mark.

The gold added to his title in the 100m breaststroke shared with China’s Dong Zhihao, bronze in the 50m breaststroke, and silver in the mixed and men’s 4x100m medley relays.

The teenager said he was surprised and honoured that Olympic champion Leon Marchand knew who he was, after the Frenchman described the 17-year-old as a “scary” prospect ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“I respect him because I know just how strong he is. But if I want to win, he’s someone I know I’ll have to beat.”

Ohashi’s world record performance came just a week after the teenager recovered from COVID-19.

Yan Ziyi, 18

China: Athletics 

Yan was already javelin world number one and Asian record holder when she stepped onto the field for her Games debut – her first and only throw of 70.46 metres was enough for gold and a Games record.

It was the sixth-best of all time and well ahead of Olympic champion and home hero Haruka Kitaguchi’s 62.70m.

Yan is closing in on the world record of 72.28m set by Barbora Spotakova in 2008. In May, she hurled a world-leading, record-breaking 71.74m to open an unprecedented season.

Chen Yujie, 17

China: Athletics

Chen stormed to a new Games record in the women’s 100m en route to her first gold as she announced herself as the new sprint queen in Asia.

“I have no limits,” was her response when asked how much faster she hopes to run.

She followed up her podium finish with a silver in the 200m and gold in the women’s and mixed 4x100m relays.

Taiju Goto, 17

Japan: Athletics

Goto narrowly missed gold in the men’s 400m hurdles, but his 47.93s was enough for a world under-18 best time, Asian under-20 best time, and a new personal best.

The teen star has run sub-50 seconds eight times this season alone, an impressive feat for a 17-year-old. His Asian Games silver added to the World Under-20 one he bagged in August.

Kumkum Mohod, 17

India: Archery

Mohod scripted history for India when she became the first Indian to win an individual recurve archery gold at the Games. The 17-year-old helped India to gold in the women’s team recurve, and partnered with Dhiraj Bommadevara for mixed team silver.

Mohod’s gold was no stroke of luck; she defeated South Korea’s reigning world champion and Olympic medallist Kang Chaeyoung in the quarterfinals before dominating China’s Zhu Jingyi in the semifinals.

“Ever since I’ve made it to the national team, I’ve been visualising this moment. I had visualised shooting an X, and that is exactly what happened,” she told reporters after the match, according to Indian media.

Anahat Singh, 18

India: Squash

World junior champion Anahat Singh has been India’s finest in the sport for several years now. Despite only being 18, Aichi-Nagoya was Singh’s second Asian Games outing after competing at Hangzhou 2023, where she won two bronze medals in the mixed doubles and women’s team events.

This time round, she won a silver in the women’s singles against world number five Sivasangari Subramaniam of Malaysia. However, her semifinal match against Japan’s Satomi Watanabe was what she called the “best win” of her career after producing a stellar comeback to defeat the world number six.

Yuki Kurihara, 11

Japan: e-sports

At just 11 years of age, e-sports prodigy Kurihara became the youngest gold medallist in Asian Games history when he won Puyo Puyo Champions.

“I’m really happy. The gold medal is really beautiful, shiny and heavy,” Kurihara said after his final, where he barely broke a sweat.

Kurihara started playing Puyo Puyo in his first year of primary school – where he still studies – and soon started competing and winning in tournaments. He obtained his pro licence in April this year and regularly beats adults, often triple his age.

Ku Yong-yan, 12

Taipei: Skateboarding

Ku took silver in the men’s skateboarding park with 87.33 points, and was just one of several teenagers – in his case, a pre-teen – who medalled in skateboarding at the Games.

Japan’s Izuru Nagahara, 15, took gold in the event. China’s Zhu Yuanling, also 15, won gold in the women’s street skateboarding competition.

China’s Cao Shiqi finished fourth in women’s skateboarding park and was the youngest athlete in China’s delegation at the Games.

She became an Olympic champion in Seoul. Janet Evans then won her fourth gold medal in Barcelona. But the star swimmer’s greatest Olympic moment came outside of a pool in Atlanta.

LA28 announced Tuesday it will begin the U.S. portion of the 2028 Olympic torch relay in Atlanta in a return to the city that hosted the United States’ last Summer Games and provided the Olympic movement with one of its most iconic torch relay moments. The city where Evans passed the Olympic flame to Muhammad Ali changed the swimming champion’s view on the Games and fueled her desire to bring the torch back as LA28 hopes to write an equally influential chapter of Olympic history.

“I realized when I carried that torch that the flame represents so much more than medals,” said Evans, now LA28’s chief athlete officer. “It certainly represents victory and all those attributes about the Olympics. But it also brings people together, and it’s a symbol of hope and what the Olympic movement really does for everyone.”

The torch relay, which begins in Olympia, Greece, will come to the United States in spring 2028, pass through all 50 states and culminate on July 14, 2028, with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony in L.A.

Three decades ago, the relay legs were reversed. Atlanta’s U.S. torch relay started in L.A., where Evans was one of the first people to run with it in 1996. She never thought she would carry it again during the opening ceremony.

Swimmers never attend opening ceremonies, Evans retorted when Billy Payne, president and chief executive of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, asked her to run the penultimate leg of the torch relay. She would be competing the next day and needed to rest her legs ahead of her final Olympic races. She didn’t believe him when he promised that carrying the torch in the opening ceremony would surpass any Olympic medal she could win.

Running past her fellow Olympians in Centennial Olympic Stadium made Evans finally understand. At the top of a large ramp, Ali emerged out of the dark night. Evans felt a deep rumble as the boxing champion came into view. The stadium felt like it would collapse.

Ali, trembling from the effects of Parkinson’s disease but with strength still evident, held the flaming torch aloft.

Payne was “worried to death” that Ali could drop the torch, he said, 30 years later. Payne instructed Evans that if that happened, she was to grab his arm, pick up the specially engineered torch that would never extinguish and light the fuse ball together.

Janet Evans passes the Olympic flame to Muhammad Ali during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremony on July 19, 1996.

(Associated Press)

When Evans faced Ali to pass the flame, she knew she wouldn’t need to resort to Plan B.

“I saw it in his eyes,” Evans said. “I still talk to people that were in the stadium, and they say it changed me. It made me realize that I can do great things just like him.”

The torch and the flame endure in an ever-changing Olympic movement. The Games are no longer just a sports competition. They’re the biggest sporting event in the world. They’re seen as a symbol of unity. For host cities, they can also be seen as a high-stakes burden that must bring economic, commercial and civic success. Anything short of perfection feels like disaster on the world stage.

Now less than two years until the Games open, LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman acknowledged there can be some “angst” around the process that is kicking into the delivery phase.

LA28 is still trying to secure millions of dollars in funding to ensure smooth transportation during the Olympics and Paralympics. The nightmare scenario of running over budget and saddling local taxpayers with debt hangs over the organizing committee.

With no permanent venues to build in advance, much of LA28’s spending will take place in the final stages. It’s almost that time to spend, Wasserman acknowledged. Getting to finalize major touchpoints such as the torch relay, the mascot and the medal designs while preparing to makeover existing venues signal excitement and confidence in the organization’s process.

“The part now [that] we are in is making sure all of our plans are clear, all of our difficult decisions are being made, so that when we go, we have as few changes and as few course corrections as possible,” Wasserman said. “Not that there won’t be any, but to limit those as much as possible, so that we operate towards the start line with as much certainty as possible, which is the only way to deliver a project of this scale.”

LA28 will announce the full torch relay route in 2027. The private organizing committee has a rough sketch of the path that will snake through all 50 states. The nationwide tour was one of Wasserman’s earliest plans for the relay. While he was intent to bring the Olympics back to L.A. for the third time, he has always wanted these to be “America’s Games.”

Payne is jealous that LA28’s torch relay will reach every corner of the United States when Atlanta only managed 42 states. LA28’s route promises to pass through iconic cities and landmarks, but Wasserman is most keen on carrying the torch through small towns, per advice he received from Payne.

“If you want to see the power and the impact of what you’re doing, that’s where you will feel it,” Wasserman said his Atlanta counterpart told him. “Because that city, that community, it will be the biggest thing in that town. That is the power of the Olympic movement.”

Payne calls it “the burden and the joy” of the torch. During his Olympic planning process, he was never more nervous than when he carried the flame through the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium, where he met his wife, Martha, and played for legendary football coach Vince Dooley. Hampered by a hip injury, Payne limped through only a third of his allotted distance. He still cherished every painful step.

“The sense of the entire history of the Olympic world, the hopes and dreams of all the athletes, indeed, all the people of my community, my city, my country, they were all supporting us,” Payne said. “It was an amazing emotional time, and one I think [of] every single time we do the Olympic torch relay. It impacts people very similarly.”

The flame is lit during a ceremony at Olympia, the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games, using a mirror and light from the sun. It will run through Greece before being transferred to the United States. Since the modern torch relay tradition began in 1936, the flame has burned underwater (Sydney 2000) and in space (Atlanta 1996) and traveled by plane, train, automobile, boat, pony and even camel.

To continue the tradition, LA28 will call upon thousands of torchbearers. LA28 will announce information on the torchbearer nomination process in the coming months.

The Olympic flame is passed to a torch during a ceremony in Olympia, Greece, in November 2025 prior to the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games in Italy.

(Milos Bicanski / Getty Images)

Once it gets to the final 25 to 30 torchbearers, Wasserman said, each runner has to be “fundamentally important, connected and relevant to what we’re doing.” Runners could honor the Olympic movement’s past or future while celebrating L.A. and sports before passing the flame to the final torchbearer to light the cauldron.

The ultimate honor is typically reserved for sporting heroes from the host country, often with Olympic excellence on their resume. Since 1980, only two Summer Games have featured a cauldron lit by a non-Olympic or Paralympic athlete. Ali’s iconic moment set a high bar for the LA28 Games, but with 22 months left before the opening ceremony, the question of who will light L.A.’s cauldron remains a fun parlor game, Wasserman said.

He can make only one promise, which he first told Rafer Johnson. The legendary decathlete who climbed 99 steps to light the cauldron at the Coliseum in 1984 just begged Wasserman not to repeat the punishing path.

“Who lights it and how they get there, I don’t know,” Wasserman said, “but there won’t be however many stairs he ran up to get up to the bottom of the peristyle.”

The top seeds defend their Asian Games squash titles, becoming the first players to qualify for the Los Angeles Games.

Malaysia’s Eain Yow Ng and Sivasangari Subramaniam have made history by becoming the first squash players to qualify for the Summer Olympics after winning gold medals at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan.

The defending champions won the men’s and women’s finals on Sunday and earned a ticket to the 2028 Los Angeles Games, where squash will make its Olympic debut.

Squash is among a handful of sports at Aichi-Nagoya where a gold medal serves as automatic qualification for the next Olympics.

Both Eain and Sivasangari successfully defended their titles without dropping a single game in their campaigns. Their victories gave Malaysia its fifth and sixth gold medals.

World number 18 Eain thrashed India’s Abhay Singh 11-9, 11-5, 11-5 in 33 minutes at the Nagoya Kinjo Futo Arena and became the first Malaysian to qualify for the Olympics.

World number five Sivasangari joined her compatriot soon after when she made quick work of the women’s final against India’s Anahat Singh.

She demolished Singh, ranked 17th in the world, 11-4, 11-4, 11-7 in just 23 minutes to clinch gold.

Earlier, Singh, the world junior champion, produced a stellar comeback in the semifinals from two sets down to overpower Japan’s Satomi Watanabe (9-11, 11-13, 12-10, 11-6, 11-3) on Saturday.

“I think it is the best win of my career,” Singh, 18, said after the match. “She’s number six in the world, and that’s the highest win I’ve ever had in my squash career.”

She made history even before Sunday’s match began when her semifinal victory made her the first Indian woman to reach the singles final at the Asian Games.

Earlier in the day, Pakistan picked up two more bronze medals at the games as third seed Noor Zaman toppled compatriot Ashab Irfan 3-0 in the bronze medal match. Watanabe took a 3-1 win over Hong Kong’s Sin Yuk Chan.

Days before the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art officially opens, protesters from the Fair Games Coalition — wearing Jedi robes and Jar Jar Binks masks and carrying lightsabers — rallied together outside the new museum.

Dozens of people from the group fighting for better worker protections during major sporting events were loudly blowing horns, banging drums and chanting, “Sí se puede,” directly across from Exposition Park’s newest museum. The group was at the museum’s private opening party Saturday night to take a stance against museum co-founder Mellody Hobson‘s recent resignation from the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, LA28.

“We launched the campaign with some real, reasonable demands,” said Jessica Durrum, the director of the Fair Games Coalition, for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. “If the Olympics are coming to town, we want to make sure there are lasting benefits for our communities.”

The Fair Games Coalition, which is made up of over 80 organizations, formed to fight for better labor deals during major events like the Super Bowl and the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Some of the unions in the coalition include United Teachers Los Angeles, National Union of Healthcare Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, United Farm Workers and various community groups.

Ahead of these events, the group is asking that employers provide union and living wage jobs, funding for 50,000 units of housing for working families, a moratorium on short-term rentals and protections for immigrant workers.

Gladys Avyla marches in a Fair Games Coalition protest outside the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

(Jonathan Alcorn / For The Times)

Gladys Avyla, a member of Unite Here Local 11, has worked as a cleaner at the W Hotel in Hollywood for the last 14 years. Several years ago she had to move to Victorville when her rent in L.A. got too high. Avyla said that with these major sporting events coming through town she’s worried the cost of living will continue to rise as her work gets busier and busier.

“Rent is very high, and everything is expensive. It’s hard living here. We need a wage increase for the Olympics because everything costs so much,” Avyla said in Spanish. “We need help for all workers. We’re human beings, but, honestly, we aren’t treated like human beings.”

Hobson, who co-founded the billion-dollar museum alongside her husband, George Lucas, resigned from LA28 earlier this week. She reportedly stepped down from the position due to the demands of running the Lucas Museum.

But the Fair Games Coalition claims she responded to their requests to meet and discuss their concerns by resigning. The 35-person board led by Casey Wasserman, who was recently under heat for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, is meant to help plan and execute the upcoming Olympic Games.

“That’s how you hide your head in the sand. But we’re not giving up. She still has clout and still has a lot of power in the city of Los Angeles with the Olympic Committee,” said the Rev. Gary Bernard Williams from St. Mark United Methodist Church, a member of the coalition. “There’s going to be a lot of money flowing at the top. Very little money will be trickling down to the workers who need it the most.”

Demonstrators at a Fair Games Coalition protest at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

(Jonathan Alcorn / For The Times)

LA28 and the Lucas Museum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During this year’s World Cup, where several games were hosted in L.A., Unite Here Local 11, the union which represents workers including dishwashers, concession workers, bartenders and servers and SoFi Stadium’s food-service operator Legends Global, came to a tentative agreement days before the first match. Pastor Bridie Roberts, who works as the community organizing director at Unite Here Local 11, said having the Fair Games Coalition’s support was helpful during the negotiations.

“Our members face serious, critical decisions every single day about how to make ends meet and they work with some of the biggest tourism companies in the world that will profit in the billions of these games,” said Roberts. “We feel that the games have potential to bring real outcomes for working people, but only if we fight for them.”

So what about the crocodiles?

They’re not mentioned anywhere in the latest update from the IOC and World Rowing and they weren’t referenced in the media release about the technical assessment. That report itself has not yet been made public.

The safety management plan for this weekend’s school regatta does however mention the word “crocodile” 28 times.

“The Fitzroy River is within recognised crocodile country,” it says.

“Event planning must therefore assume that a crocodile sighting is possible… No natural waterway in crocodile country can be guaranteed to be crocodile-free.”

Procedures this weekend include suspending racing and competitors returning to the bank if a croc is spotted. The official signal for a sighting is the call of “crocodile, crocodile, crocodile”.

Asked specifically about crocodiles, New Zealand’s Wickham told the BBC the primary concern was ensuring the “fairest possible course” for rowers. “We would obviously expect any course chosen to be safe for rowers,” he added.

The company owned by Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart, Hancock Prospecting, which supported Rockhampton’s bid and has pumped tens of millions of dollars into sports including rowing, pointed to “fake media” concerns about risks posed by flooding and crocodiles in the Fitzroy.

“The people of Rocky for many years have sent their own children to train in this river, and for competitions, without a single crocodile incident,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

And those who argue the tabloid-friendly crocodile debate is overblown, say the biggest of the creatures live downstream. The less-dangerous freshwater crocodiles are more likely to be spotted in the rowing arena, they say.

Also contested by government is the flood risk, though Rowing Queensland’s O’Loughlin says that their schools event was due to be held on the Fitzroy in August 2024, but had to be moved after the course was washed away.

Brisbane 2032’s chief executive has said organisers are making contingency plans “as we would for any venue”.

The 2000 Olympics venue in Sydney is ready and waiting as a backup – though that would be unconscionable for Queenslanders.