EUGENE, USA - 9 Aug 2026:
Japan's 17-year-old wunderkind, Taiju Goto, joins a galaxy of other Asian hurdlers as he claimed a silver medal in the 400m hurdles on the concluding day of the 21st World Athletics U20 Championships at Hayward Field.
Winning a medal in this event at the World Athletics U20 Championships was nothing new for Asian athletes. Incidentally, Qatar's Mubarak Al-Nubi won the gold three decades ago in Sydney. Athletes from Asia also had a good collection of 7 silver and 2 bronze medals in this event before Goto. But what made Goto special was his age. He still has another opportunity to better his place and performance in the U20 category two years from now!
After winning the Asian U20 title in Hong Kong this May, Goto went on to win Japanese senior nationals in Nagoya with a World U18 best of 48.09 secs over the standard (91 cm) hurdles. It was an Asian U20 record and raised high anticipation for the Finals in Eugene. South African Matodzi Ndo was the first to come out of the blocks, while Goto, along with American Miller Warme, Jamaican Jahvanie Tyrell and Czechia's Michal Rada, followed quickly thereafter.
Warme and Rada snatched the lead midway while Goto was hanging on their shoulders. The Czech hurdler moved ahead with an increasing pace, and Goto joined the leader slightly behind. Rada clocked a superb 48.59 secs to better the European U20 record. Goto finished 0.64 seconds behind for the silver in 49.23 secs. Ndo pushed Warme to claim the bronze in 49.90 secs.
Goto, who cracked the 50-second barrier for the first time while winning the Japanese National Schools Championships in Hiroshima last year, continued to get faster this year and registered as many as six sub-50-second clockings in 2026 to date. He is among the favourites for the podium in next month's Asian Games on his home turf.
With Goto's medal, Asian countries went home with a dozen medals from Eugene. However, one of the highly anticipated women's high jump finals drew a blank. The Asian U20 champion, Pooja of India, was one of the medal prospects before the competition. But an unpleasant experience of losing out in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, where jumpers were troubled by lashing rain, destabilised her potential to make the podium in Eugene. She finished seventh with a height of 1.84m as opposed to her brilliant 1.93m in Hong Kong. The gold in Eugene went to Australia's Izobelle Louison-Roe at 1.92m.
Japan's Naoya Inoue narrowly missed a medal in the men's pole vault. Both Inoue and Isaiah Whitaker of the United States cleared an identical 5.45m, but the American got the bronze medal on count-back. Another athlete who disappointingly missed a medal was the intermediate hurdler Mariam Kareem from the United Arab Emirates. After having topped the qualification round, Mariam improved the UAE U20 record to 56.27 secs, but it was not enough for bronze, which went to the Greek athlete Eleni Iakovaki (55.99s) in the 400m hurdles.
Japan's Ayaka Suzuki was fifth in the women's javelin throw. Chinese Hammer thrower Chen Jiajun (sixth), Korean javelin thrower Kim Min-Ji (seventh) and Kazakh discus thrower Maxim Sazhnev (eleventh) also landed far outside the podium.
There were two seventh-place finishes on the track by Japanese steeplechaser Sota Koga and metric miler Chen Tzu-Chieh of Chinese Taipei.
The final day's proceedings saw a World U20 record (38.16 secs) by the United States quartet in the men's 4x100m relay, while Team Japan finished fourth with a season's best of 39.41 secs. Six World U20 records and seven championship records were broken over the five days.
Ram. Murali Krishnan
for Asian Athletics
File picture: Taiju Goto wins the Asian U20 title in Hong Kong
