Japanese teenager Shin Ohashi became the first man to swim the 200-meter breaststroke under two minutes and five seconds, touching the wall in 2:04.83 to win gold at the Asian Games in Nagoya on Thursday and shatter a world record that had stood since 2023.
The mark eclipses the previous record of 2:05.48, set by China's Qin Haiyang at the 2023 world championships in Fukuoka. Ohashi, 17, went out hard from the blocks and never let up, posting a rapid stroke turnover that left the field well behind. Kyrgyzstan's Denis Petrashov took silver in 2:08.67 and South Korea's Cho Sung-jae claimed bronze in 2:08.76 — both more than three seconds slower.
Ohashi said afterward that he had not expected to swim that fast. "I wasn't expecting to post a time like that," he said. "So I was really happy. At the same time, I felt a huge sense of relief."
The swim arrives just days after French Olympic champion Léon Marchand called Ohashi a legitimate threat to his own breaststroke dominance, saying he was "scared" of the teenager's rise. Ohashi, for his part, seemed unwilling to get comfortable with the record. "I may be the world-record holder now, but the level of competition around the world will keep rising," he said, according to a race breakdown from SwimSwam. "I don't want to be left behind. Instead, I want to be the one who sets the pace."
The swim is one of the signature moments of these Asian Games, held on Japanese soil, and puts Ohashi on a short list of teenage swimmers to hold a global record in an Olympic event heading into the run-up to the Los Angeles Games.