Shin Ohashi eyes world title after swim world mark, gymnast Carlos Yulo clinches career grand slam

NAGOYA, Japan, Sept 24 - 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 gold medals, 17-year-old Ohashi produced a blistering 2:04.83 to eclipse the previous mark of 2:05.48 set by China's Qin Haiyang at the 2023 world championships in Fukuoka.

"The world record was my goal so I'm very happy to get it," Ohashi 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.

Yulo, who honed his craft in Japan on a scholarship from the local Olympic committee, scored 14.666 to edge Kazakhstan's Milad Karimi (14.600) in a cliffhanger. His brother Karl also competed in the final.

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," Yulo told reporters. "We can just relax and really hope for the best tomorrow."

CHINA'S GOLD RUSH

Sporting powerhouse China continued their imperious march through the multi-sport event, breaching the 75-gold mark.

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.

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, 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. REUTERS