The Albany Gazette - Japan teen smashes swim world record as Asian Games complaints mount

Home hope Ohashi scorched to gold in the men's 200m breaststroke in 2min 04.83sec, less than two years out from the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The teenager with a fondness for junk food cut more than half a second off the previous mark, held by China's Qin Haiyang since July 2023.

Ohashi had already won the 100m breaststroke gold this week in Tokyo after a dead heat with China's Dong Zhihao.

"My target has always been to break the world record and I'm so happy to have done it," said Ohashi.

"My next goal is to win gold at next year's world championships and then go on to win gold at the Olympics," he added.

"I don't want to be satisfied and I want to feel these emotions again."

Previous world record holder Qin did not swim the 200m at this year's Asian Games.

Three sports, including swimming, are taking place in Tokyo but the main competition is in the city of Nagoya and the Aichi prefecture.

No traditional athletes' village has been built to save money.

Teams have instead been staying in temporary container-style huts, hotels and the Costa Serena cruise ship moored in Nagoya port.

There have been numerous complaints about a shortage of rooms, with organisers stretched to the limit to accommodate the more than 17,000 competitors and officials.

"It remains a problem from the beginning until now," Chalitrat Chandrubeksa, deputy secretary general of the National Olympic Committee of Thailand, told AFP.

"The number of (rooms available on the) cruise ship and hotels does not match our actual number of athletes," he added.

"It's like musical chairs," he said.

More than 4,000 people are staying on the ship and 2,000 in the huts, called "villas" by organisers.

There are also mounting complaints about shuttle buses for athletes turning up late or not at all.

South Korea have consistently criticised the organisers and said the problems were "affecting athletes' performances", the news agency Yonhap reported.

Aiming renewed fire at local organisers, Ryu Seung-min, president of the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee, added: "If I were to give them a grade, it would be an F."

- Eel-powered whizz-kid wows -

China embellished their haul when Yang Yang finished ahead of North Korea's Pang Un Chol and Thailand's Silachai Theerapong in the men's 60kg class in weightlifting.

Yang raised 138kg in the snatch and 166kg in the clean and jerk for a total of 304kg, 3kg better than Pang (127kg/174kg/301kg).

The North Korean matched his own clean and jerk world record at 174kg, but could not manage the four extra kilogrammes that would have given him victory with his final attempt.

North Korea turned the tables in the men's 65kg event, Pak Myong Jin winning with a 182kg final lift of the competition and 328kg total to relegate China's world record holder He Yueji to silver by 1kg.

China swatted aside the hosts 3-0 to win women's team gold in badminton.

Japan's 11-year-old eSports whizz-kid Yuki Kurihara crushed the competition, beating opponents almost three times his age.

The bespectacled primary school student, who says he eats eel to prepare for contests, is the youngest athlete at the Games.

He competes in Puyo Puyo Champions, a puzzle game where players try to clear their screen of coloured blobs by lining them up and popping them.

Kurihara beat all four opponents he faced to top Group A and put him on track for gold.

The men's cricket began with hosts Japan losing to Afghanistan by 48 runs and Malaysia crushing Hong Kong by eight wickets in preliminary group matches.

Favourites India and fellow Asian heavyweight Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh are seeded directly into the quarter-finals next week.

(W.Williams--TAG)