The Asian Games were a blur, a sports kaleidoscope of 45 countries and regions that went dark on Sunday, closed officially by Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, the president of the Olympic Council of Asia.
The games featured about 11,000 athletes – more than the Summer Olympics two years ago in Paris. And now they head west to Doha, Qatar, in 2030.
This will be a homecoming. Sheikh Joaan is a Qatari, a younger brother of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Al Thani.
Amid the whirlwind of 43 sports – there were many regional specialties featured like kurash, kabaddi and sepaktakraw – the games provided a glimpse at many top athletes who will compete again in two years at the Los Angeles Olympics.
China topped the medal table as it has for decades with 169 gold and 341 overall. Japan was second with 83 gold and 269 overall. South Korea (39, 150) was next followed by India (21, 85), Uzbekistan (21, 70) and Iran (19, 52).
Forty of the 45 countries or regions won at least one medal. The bottom four won only a single bronze medal: Bangladesh, Brunei, Laos and Syria. Japanese 17-year-old Shin Ohashi set a swimming world record in the 200-meter breaststroke (2 minutes, 4.83 seconds), the first to swim under 2:05.
Also in the pool, Chinese 13-year-old female Yu Zidi won the 200 butterfly and the 200 and 400 medley relays. Organizers named her the female MVP of the event. Zhang Zhanshou was the other prominent Chinese swimmer, a freestyler who won seven gold medals.
The male MVP was track and field sprinter Puripol Boonson of Thailand, who clocked 9.90 in the 100 and 19.88 in the 200.
India defeated bitter rival Pakistan for gold in men’s cricket, and South Korea’s men won both the baseball and soccer gold. That granted team members an exemption from mandatory military service at home. Tom Kim also picked up the exemption, taking men’s singles golf.
Mixed martial arts also debuted, without the cage and with fighters wearing gloves and shin pads. Proponents talk of a long-shot to land in the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane, Australia.
Organizers and the OCA offered an aggressive defense of the games, which were dotted with glitches and larger mistakes.
Japanese organizers put on what they termed ‘sustainable’ games – no athletes village, lodging for athletes on a cruise ship, in hotels and in temporary containers. The transportation system was also stressed by venues that stretched from Nagoya, the host city, across central Japan. Swimming was in Tokyo with some soccer in Osaka.
Despite the focus on austerity and ‘no white elephants,’ organizers and the OCA added a half-dozen sports to the program. They planned for 15,000 athletes and officials, but they said 17,000 arrived through late registrations.
To cram in more sports, organizers began the basketball competition on Sept. 10, nine days before the official opening. The Olympics often do the same, starting two or three days ahead – but not nine.
‘We had some delays of buses and we’d like to apologize for that,’ Hideaki Omura, the governor of Aichi prefecture and the head of the organizing committee, said Sunday. He described the event as having faced ‘huge challenges.’
Some of the glitches included buses heading to the wrong destination, the North Korean anthem played at a field hockey match between South Korea and Bangladesh, and an initial scramble to find beds for all 17,000 officials and athletes.
As is usual at large events, audible complaints seemed to fall off once the event got rolling and the sports took over.
Fallout from pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games
Nagoya was awarded this event in 2016 – before COVID-19 and before the Tokyo Olympics were delayed until 2021. Japan officially spent $13 billion on the Tokyo Games although a government report said the real number might be twice that much,
Nagoya organizers in 2016 announced a budget of roughly $650 million, but late in 2025 they said the budget had swollen to about $2.5 billion – almost four times as much.
The Japanese advertising giant Dentsu, convicted of bid-rigging connected to the Tokyo Olympics, was kept out of bidding on contracts for the Asian Games. Dentsu has wide experience running large sports events and lining up sponsors.