Turkmen athletes will take part in the opening ceremony of the XX Asian Games, which will be held on September 19 at Paloma Mizuho Stadium in Nagoya, the administrative center of Aichi Prefecture (Japan).
Held every four years under the patronage of the Olympic Council of Asia, these multi-sport competitions bring together the best athletes from across the continent and attract considerable international interest. The first such Games were held in 1951 in New Delhi (India). At that time, only 489 athletes from 11 countries took part, competing in six sports. The upcoming Asian Games in Japan, meanwhile, will bring together thousands of athletes from 45 countries, including a refugee team, who will compete for 469 sets of medals in 43 sports.
The decision to hold the Asian Games in Nagoya was made on September 25, 2016, at the annual Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) General Assembly in Da Nang (Vietnam). Incidentally, the Games in Aichi and Nagoya, which will take place from September 19 to October 4, will be the third Asian Games to be held in Japan. Previously, the country hosted them in Tokyo in 1958 and in Hiroshima in 1994.
Turkmenistan, where the state pays great attention to the development of sports, is sending a delegation to the Asian Games for the ninth time. The delegation consists of 57 people, including 34 athletes and 15 coaches. Our athletes will compete in eight sports – boxing, wrestling (freestyle and Greco-Roman), karate, kurash, athletics, swimming, weightlifting, and wushu.
The first two groups of Turkmen athletes spent more than a day traveling from Ashgabat to Nagoya, making the difficult journey on three flights via Istanbul and Tokyo. The first members of our delegation to arrive at the XX Asian Games on September 17 were representatives of wushu (5 athletes and 2 coaches). The following day, they were joined by swimmers (3 athletes and 1 coach) and karate athletes (3 athletes and 1 coach). On the opening day of the 2026 Asian Games, the arrival in Nagoya is also expected of boxers (5 athletes and 2 coaches), track and field athletes (2 athletes and 2 coaches), and weightlifters (4 athletes, 2 coaches, 1 judge, and 1 representative of the national sports federation).
At the previous Asian Games, held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou from September 23 to October 8, 2023, Turkmenistan’s sports delegation consisted of 104 people, including 67 athletes competing in 11 sports – 3x3 basketball, boxing, wrestling (freestyle and Greco-Roman), jiu-jitsu, judo, kurash, karate-do, athletics, swimming, weightlifting, and wushu. Our athletes returned home with six bronze medals, won by: judoka Maysa Pardayeva (up to 57 kg), kurash athletes Aynur Amanova (up to 48 kg) and Ishanmyrat Atayev (up to 90 kg), boxer Bayramdurdy Nurmukhammedov (up to 71 kg), freestyle wrestler Dovletmyrat Orazgylyjov (up to 86 kg), and karate athlete Bayry Bayryev (up to 67 kg).
