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Japan Tops Medal Table at End of World University Games


The 2025 FISU World University Games wrapped Sunday in Rhine-Ruhr, Germany. In the men's 20 km race walk Atsuki Tsuchiya (Ritsumeikan Univ.) brought home one more medal for Japan, unable to match Italian Andrea Cosa's 1:19:48 WUG record for gold but just holding off Ukrainian Mykola Rushchak for silver 1:20:08 to 1:20:10. Keisuke Hara (Kyoto Univ.) wasn't far back in 4th, finishing in 1:20:26, with Taisei Yoshizako (Tokyo Gakugei Univ.) 12th in 1:23:11. As a team the three athletes's combined scores were good enough to take gold.

The women's 20 km race walk squad couldn't match the men's performance. With Australian Elizabeth McMillen setting a WUG record 1:28:18 for the win and silver and bronze medalists Jinlin Ning and Haiying Ji of China both under 1:30 Ayane Yanai (Ritsumeikan Univ.) was 14th in 1:35:04 and Sumika Tani (Kanazawa Gakuin Univ.) 19th of 25 finishers in 1:40:37.

In the women's 3000 mSC final Ayana Yamashita (Osaka Gakuin Univ.) turned in an excellent 9:54.49 PB, but that was only good enough for 10th. Gold went to Finland's Ilona Mononen in 9:31.86, with silver medalist Ankita of India running a PB 9:31.99 to make it an exciting finish. Germany's Adia Budde took bronze in 9:33.34.

Raika Murakami (Kyushu Kyoritsu Univ.) was also 10th in the women's hammer throw final, throwing 60.54 m to Chinese gold medalist Jie Zhao's 72.80 m. In the men's pole vault final Atsushi Haraguchi (Higashi Osaka Univ.) was one of 4 athletes not to clear any height. Norway's Simen Guttormsen was the gold medalist after clearing 5.75 m for the first time.

Japan's final medal count was 5 gold medals, 3 silver and 3 bronze, enough to put it 1st in the overall medal standings ahead of Australia and China. 3 of those golds were team medals, but considering the absence of Japanese athletes in the 5000 m and men in the 10000 m it was still overall one of the better World University Games in Japan's record books.

© 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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