In the men’s 400m relay final on day 10 of the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, Japan (Shuhei Tada, Fukuto Komuro, Yoshihide Kiryu, Yuki Koike) finished 5th with a time of 38.57 seconds. China took gold in 38.17, followed by Taiwan in 2nd, South Korea in 3rd, and Thailand in 4th. Japan never found its rhythm from the first leg (Tada) to the second (Komuro), and sloppy baton work throughout cost them a medal for the first time in four straight Games. Kiryu reflected, “We said ‘gold medal’ out loud, but somewhere in our hearts there was a feeling that just getting a medal would be fine.” On 5ch, discussion centered on baton-passing technique, the team’s aging roster, and whether hosting the Games was even worthwhile.
◇Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, Day 10 — Athletics (September 28, 2026, Paloma Mizuho Stadium)
The men’s 400m relay final was held, and Japan (Shuhei Tada, Fukuto Komuro, Yoshihide Kiryu, Yuki Koike) finished 5th in 38.57 seconds. China won gold in 38.17. Taiwan took 2nd, followed by South Korea and Thailand.
Japan never got into a rhythm with Tada running the first leg and Komuro the second, and baton work lacked sharpness across the board. Koike, taking the handoff from Kiryu in 4th place on the anchor leg, dropped a further spot. Having missed a medal for the fourth Games running, Kiryu admitted, “We said ‘gold medal’ out loud, but somewhere in our hearts there was a feeling that just getting a medal would be fine.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
The only decent result was in Puyo Puyo lol (yes, competitive Puyo Puyo is an Asian Games event)
What's a '400m relay'?
Just write it properly as the 4×100m relay.
It hasn't generated any buzz at all.
They wanted to host the Olympics in Aichi, right?
Supposedly this was meant to build a track record of hosting international events toward that goal.
I guess the upside is it proved hosting an Olympics here is basically out of the question.
Isn't losing to Taiwan, of all teams, the bigger problem here?
Plus, not being able to use Yuji Oda, the ultimate hype man, is fatal (a TV personality famous for his enthusiastic athletics commentary). He's one of the best motivators this sport has — even if he can't do every day, they should at least squeeze him in as a guest for one.
Isn't Yuji Oda busy over at Fuji TV right now?
but Japan's time is bad, huh.
Isn't that slower than 20 years ago?
Yeah, not fast at all.
Japan's 4×100 usually runs in the 37-second range — even the B-team ran 37.84 at the World Relays just a year ago.
Yeah, the 4×400 looks promising.
Everyone was sharp in the heats.
Question is where to slot in Nakaji — first leg, probably?
If Nakaji runs the opener, he could come in right around 44.00 flat.
Wasn't Japan's World Cup result actually the best among Asian teams though?
At this rate there's barely any time spent at top speed.
Japan's baton passing gets hailed as world-class
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Drops it at the Tokyo Olympics (trauma)
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Switches from underhand to overhand passing
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Ends up with this result
Basically, they changed something that was working because of that trauma. Kind of dumb, honestly.
Pretty much every handoff was botched.
This one's on the coaching — sabotage-tier bad.
They've fallen off way too hard.
Judging by the heats, Tada wasn't pulling away at the start at all.
It was already abnormal that Japan was even in global medal contention in this event.
Thailand's Boonsong is cheat-level fast, and Japan got passed right at the end, dropping to 5th.
His acceleration was like 'wow, fast guys really are fast' — I laughed.
Take it up with TBS.
One would be understandable, but this means generational turnover just isn't happening.
It'd make sense if they were still performing at the same level, but
the Japanese sprinters who used to run 10.00–10.10 in their prime are now in their 30s and can only manage 10.30–10.50,
and that's still the top tier in Japan…
No wonder they lost to Taiwan.
The young guys are plenty fast, actually.
They've even broken Kiryu's high school record — the one everyone said was untouchable.
so they're the ones who should be pushed as the face of the sport.
Something like 'Relay Maidens' or whatever — there's gotta be an angle.
Right, it's the women's era now, not these lousy 'samurai.'
By that logic, so are Brazil and the Netherlands?
Background and Talking Points
Japan’s men’s 400m relay squad is still largely built around the generation that contended for medals at the Tokyo Olympics, and many posts in the thread pointed to a stalled generational handover — “same members, nobody coming up behind them.” Some posts speculated that Japan overhauled its baton-passing technique in the wake of the Tokyo Olympics dropped-baton incident, but that’s speculation within the thread rather than an officially confirmed change, so it’s worth treating with caution. Opinions were also split on the value of hosting the Games, with some framing it as a track record built toward an eventual Olympic bid and others simply seeing it as an event that failed to generate buzz. Alongside comparisons noting that times from China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand have all improved while Japan’s top sprinters’ personal bests have declined with age, this 5th-place finish is being read less as a one-off slump than as a structural problem.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Asian Games] Athletics: Men’s 400m Relay — Japan Finishes 5th, Athletes Stunned After the Race, China Gold, Taiwan 2nd, South Korea 3rd.”
