Nagoya: Japan's 11-year-old eSports prodigy
Yuki Kurihara won Asian Games gold on Saturday after defeating a series of
opponents up to three times his age, claiming the Puyo Puyo Champions title
with a 10-2 victory in the final.
The bespectacled primary school student,
believed to be the youngest competitor at the Games in Aichi-Nagoya and Japan's
youngest athlete in Asian Games history, looked unruffled throughout the
competition. He crushed Thailand's Tanarak Wongkitkun, 28, 10-1 in the
semi-finals to secure at least a silver medal, before beating South Korea's
24-year-old Kang Dongshin in the final despite going down 1-0 early on.
Puyo Puyo Champions is a puzzle game where
players try to clear their screen of coloured blobs by lining them up and
popping them. Kurihara started playing in his first year of primary school and
began competing and winning in tournaments soon after. He obtained his pro
licence in April this year and regularly beats adults. "It's hard having
to balance it with school and cram school, but it's really fun," he said
ahead of the Games. "I want to practise a lot and develop some new
strengths."
There are no publicly available records of youngest medallists in Asian Games history, which were first contested in 1951. However, Indonesia's Bunga Nyimas won bronze in women's skateboarding aged 12 in Jakarta in 2018, while Cui Chenxi, 13, won gold in women's street skateboarding three years ago in Hangzhou.
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