The Asian Games Open in Nagoya on Saturday: 15,000 Athletes, 43 Sports, 469 Golds, and a Route to Los Angeles 2028

The 20th Asian Games open on Saturday 19 September at Paloma Mizuho Stadium in Nagoya, at six in the evening Japan time, which is one in the afternoon in the Gulf. They run to 4 October across Aichi prefecture, with Nagoya as the hub and venues in Toyota, Okazaki, Ichinomiya and Anjo, under the motto Imagine One Asia. Some events have already started, as they do; the ceremony marks the beginning of the fortnight in which the medals come thick.

The scale

Around 15,000 athletes from 46 national committees will contest 469 gold medals in 43 sports and 70 disciplines, which makes this the largest sporting event in the world after the Summer Olympics and larger, by number of events, than the Olympics themselves. Japan last hosted in Hiroshima in 1994, and the country is using its 2020 Olympic infrastructure where Aichi cannot: swimming and diving are in Tokyo's Aquatics Centre, equestrian at Baji Koen, and track cycling at the Izu velodrome, according to the Olympic movement's guide. That means the biggest finals of the first week are 350 kilometres from the opening ceremony, which will feel odd on television and will not matter to the swimmers.

Why it matters more than usual

Two reasons. First, several sports are using Nagoya as a qualifying route for Los Angeles 2028, so the fields in athletics, swimming, boxing and the combat sports are closer to full strength than at a normal Games, where the top Chinese, Japanese and Korean athletes sometimes send their understudies. Second, the programme includes the sports Asia plays and the Olympics does not, kabaddi, sepak takraw, kurash, wushu, esports and cricket among them, and it is the only place those athletes get a stadium and an anthem. A cricket gold at the Asian Games is a bigger event in South Asia than most Olympic finals; Outlook India has the full day-by-day schedule.

The Gulf

Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Oman all send squads, and they arrive in a different position from four years ago in Hangzhou, where the Gulf's medals came mostly from athletics and from athletes recruited abroad. Since then Saudi Arabia has put money into football, boxing, judo and equestrian at a scale nobody else in the region matches, Qatar has the 2030 Games to prepare for and a handball and athletics programme built to peak there, and the UAE has jiu-jitsu, which is on the programme and in which it is the dominant nation. The stories to follow from here are the Saudi football team against Japan and Korea on their home ground, Bahrain's distance runners, Qatar's Mutaz Barshim, and whether the Emirati jiu-jitsu squad can convert home-federation dominance into a clean sweep on a foreign mat.

Where to look

Athletics is at the Mizuho stadium itself in the second week. The swimming finals in Tokyo are in the evening Japan time, which is early afternoon in the Gulf, and the men's 100 freestyle and women's 200 butterfly are the races where China and Japan meet head-on. The football final is on the last weekend. Esports, which made its medal debut in Hangzhou, has its own arena in Nagoya. And the closing ceremony on 4 October hands over to Doha, which hosts in 2030, so the flag that comes down in Nagoya goes up in the Gulf. We will report the medal table and the moments that deserve more than a line.