Yuki Kurihara, 11, becomes youngest Japanese Asian Games athlete in history with e-sports gold

Japan’s 11-year-old e-sports prodigy Yuki Kurihara won Asian Games gold on Saturday, thrashing opponents up to three times his age in the Puyo Puyo Champions final at the Aichi-Nagoya Games (https://www.reuters.com/sports/japans-11-year-old-esports-prodigy-wins-asiad-gold-rivals-praise-2026-09-26/; https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/9/26/yuki-kurihara-esports-gold-medal-japan-asian-games-2026-aichi-nagoya).

The bespectacled primary school student, believed to be the youngest competitor at these Games and the youngest athlete in host country Japan’s Asian Games history, beat South Korea’s 24-year-old Kang Dongshin 10-2 in the final at the Aichi Sky Expo, having gone down 1-0 early on.

Kurihara had stormed through the knockout rounds, blanking Singapore’s Justin Koh Mun June 5-0 before crushing Thailand’s 28-year-old Tanarak Wongkitkun 10-1 in the semi-final.

“To be completely honest, I felt a bit embarrassed, so I couldn’t really show my expressions or change my face much,” Kurihara said of his reaction. Standing on the podium, he bowed slightly and waved to the arena. “I’m really happy. The gold medal is really beautiful, shiny and heavy,” he added. “Also, the plush toy is super cute, and it’s cool that it is gold-coloured too.”

Silver medallist Kang praised him afterwards: “Kurihara is extremely good at making large chain reactions. His technical ability and accuracy are incredible.”

Kurihara started playing Puyo Puyo — a puzzle game where players clear coloured blobs by lining them up — in his first year of primary school, obtained his professional licence in April this year, and regularly beats adults. There are no publicly available records of the youngest medallists in Asian Games history, which began in 1951; Indonesia’s Bunga Nyimas won skateboarding bronze aged 12 in Jakarta in 2018, and 13-year-old Cui Chenxi took Games gold in Hangzhou.