Nagoya [Japan], September 25: 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 Thursday, shattering the men's 200 metres breaststroke world record.
A day after 13-year-old Yu capped her fairytale Asian Games debut with a hat-trick of golds, 17-year-old Ohashi produced a blistering 2:04.83 to eclipse the 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.
Sporting powerhouse China continued their imperious march through the multi-sport event, breaching the 75-gold mark.
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 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.
Away from the competition venues, 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, container-style modular units and a cruise ship instead.
Several athletes have voiced dissatisfaction over the cramped dimensions of their cabins and beds - a criticism echoed by local residents who toured a prototype unit near the Nagoya TV Tower.
"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.
Source: Qatar Tribune
