Asian Games guide: 43 sports, 45 nations and a cruise ship

Nagoya hosts 17,000 athletes and officials from Saturday, with swimming staged 350 km away in Tokyo

NAGOYA: The 20th Asian Games open in Japan on Saturday, bringing together 17,000 athletes and officials, among them Olympic and world champions. Here is a guide to Asia's biggest sporting event.

The Games take place mainly in the port city of Nagoya and the wider Aichi prefecture. Nagoya has more than two million residents and is Japan's fourth biggest city by population. It was flattened in World War II. The Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium, with a capacity of 30,000, is the main venue, hosting athletics and the opening and closing ceremonies. Swimming, one of the most closely watched events, is 350 kilometers (200 miles) east in the capital Tokyo. The Games, held every four years, finish on Oct 4.

Athletes will compete in 43 sports across two weeks. Aside from athletics and swimming, the other major draws will be badminton, boxing, cricket, football, golf, gymnastics, table tennis, tennis and weightlifting. In a bid to attract younger viewers there will be eSports, break dancing and BMX biking. Padel, the fast-growing racket sport, mixed martial arts (MMA) and teqball make their Asian Games debuts. Then there are more regional sports including the combat discipline kurash, as well as kabaddi and wushu. There is also virtual taekwondo.

The Asian Games are bigger than the Olympics in numbers, with more than 11,000 athletes and 6,000 officials. There will be 45 countries and territories competing. At the previous Games in 2023, held a year late because of the pandemic, hosts China comfortably topped the medals table ahead of Japan, South Korea, India and Uzbekistan. Iran and North Korea were also in the top 10. At the bottom end of the table came Syria and Palestine.

Among the names to watch is Lin Yu-ting, the Taiwanese boxer whose run to gold at the Paris Olympics ignited a major gender controversy. Among the rising stars is 15-year-old Indian cricketer Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. Even younger is Chinese swimmer Yu Zidi, who won a world championships medal aged 12 last year. Alexandra Eala, the 21-year-old tennis player from the Philippines, will be another hunting gold, as will Pakistan's Paris Olympics javelin champion Arshad Nadeem. In eSports, South Korea's team is led by Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, one of the biggest names in competitive gaming.

Japan has not built a dedicated athletes' village in a bid to reduce costs, so some competitors will stay in hotels. Others will be housed on a cruise liner docked in Nagoya's port, with temporary wooden cabins also in use. Organizers are confident the ship will make for a memorable experience, but will be hoping the weather behaves: September and October are typhoon season in Japan. The vessel, the Costa Serena, can house about 4,000 people and is the twin ship of the Costa Concordia, which sank off Tuscany in 2012, killing 32 people. — AFP