How young is too young as child prodigies win big at Asian Games

NAGOYA — The Asian Games has crowned teenage champions before, but this edition has witnessed stunning successes by child prodigies, culminating in Yuki Kurihara standing atop the podium aged just 11. The Japanese primary school student demolished opponents three times his age on the way to a historic gold in eSports in Aichi-Nagoya. He is Japan's youngest Asian Games champion in history and almost certainly the youngest the Games have ever seen. Kurihara did not even react after winning Saturday's final in Puyo Puyo Champions, a puzzle game where players try to clear their screen of colored blobs by lining them up and popping them. The boy, who does not turn 12 until June and wants to be a train driver when he grows up, later explained that he felt "embarrassed." Kurihara's face was splashed across national newspapers on Sunday. There is no publicly available official list of the youngest medalists ever at the Games, which were first contested in 1951. But the introduction in recent editions of events intended to attract younger viewers has resulted in some eye-catching displays by children. In skateboarding, Taiwan's 12-year-old Ku Yong-yan took home silver on Friday in the "men's" park final. The winner, Japan's Izuru Nagahara, was a relative veteran at 15. Nagahara...