Yan Ziyi threw once and won the Asian Games javelin

Yan Ziyi's first throw at Paloma Mizuho Stadium on a wet Sunday landed at 70.46 metres. She did not need a second one. Japan's Haruka Kitaguchi, the Paris Olympic champion, spent the rest of the night chasing a mark that was already a Games record, and never got within eight metres of it.

Kitaguchi started slowly and reached 62.70 on her sixth throw for silver. Compatriot Sae Takemoto took bronze with a season-best 62.15 on her last attempt. The old Games record was 66.09, from Liu Shiying in Jakarta in 2018. Liu later won Olympic gold in Tokyo. Yan beat the Games mark by more than four metres and was done after one throw.

That is how far ahead she is of the woman who has the Olympic gold. Two weeks ago in Budapest, Kitaguchi still had her number. She threw a Japanese record 68.92 at the World Ultimate Championship. Yan opened at 68.05, stopped after two, and took second. In Nagoya, in the rain, the order flipped by a distance that does not usually happen in a continental final.

Yan is 18, from Ningbo. She turned 18 on May 22. The next day in Xiamen she threw 71.74, the second-longest mark in history behind Barbora Spotakova's 72.28 from 2008 — the Asian record and the world under-20 record on the same spear. She was too young for the throws at Paris and at last year's Worlds in Tokyo. She won the world under-20 title in Lima in 2024 instead. Los Angeles will be her first Olympics.

"My plan was to make my first two throws count," Yan said. "But I didn't expect to reach that distance on my very first throw."

Kitaguchi was honest about the night. "I was confident I could have thrown further. It's frustrating, especially since I had such high expectations for myself."

She had already thrown past the Olympic champion, and past every Asian Games javelin that came before her. Kitaguchi still had throws left. They were not going to catch 70.46.