From ‘biased’ schedules to lost buses, why athletes are so angry about Japan’s Asian Games

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India’s badminton star PV Sindhu was forced to play three matches within 18 hours at this year’s Asian Games in Japan – something that she says robbed her of a chance to recover well and compete at her best.

Sindhu played twice on Saturday last week, with her third-round match finishing after midnight, before returning to court on Sunday afternoon for her quarter-final against Chen Yufei, which she lost. When the two-time Olympic medallist was asked if she had ever played two matches in a day in any major championship before, she said: “The scheduling was not really well organised, is what I feel.”

“We literally slept really late and then coming back in the morning (on Sunday), playing two matches in a day. Recovery is the most important priority.”

And then there was this: Pakistan’s volleyball team was taken to the wrong gymnasium shortly before a match and had to change into their kits on the bus.

The captain of the team Murad Jehan said in a video from the bus: “We have a very important match and the bus driver doesn’t know which gymnasium we are going to play.

“He took a wrong way and came to a wrong gymnasium and now we are short of time. It’s an embarrassing situation. We did not expect this from Japan. This should not have happened.”

These are just two of the incidents that have drawn criticism and raised serious questions about the organisation of the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, which began on 19 September and run until 4 October.

Another example: South Korea’s basketball team missed a scheduled practice after its shuttle failed to arrive, while its football team was once taken to the wrong venue.

For Chinese gymnast Zhang Boheng, the problems began as soon as he arrived in Japan. He said he and his teammates waited for hours after landing in Nagoya, with heavy rain later preventing them from boarding the cruise ship where they were due to stay.

“I’m totally exhausted,” Zhang said in a video shared on Chinese social media.

He also said: “I didn’t expect that after breakfast at 7am, the next time I could eat would be close to 7pm.”

Some have gone as far as calling the organisation of the games biased towards home athletes. Chinese Olympic badminton medalist Tan Ning said: “I feel the schedule is unfair. We went to make an official complaint, but the chief referee didn’t do anything about it,” adding that “when the Japan team complained, they actually changed the time schedule.”

On Wednesday, the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games and Asian Para Games Organizing Committee (AINAGOC) apologised and said that staff were working to identify the causes of individual mistakes.

Nagoya mayor Ichiro Hirosawa, who is also the acting president of the organising committee, issued an apology on Wednesday. “We must offer our apologies to the athletes and others affected by these inconveniences,” he said.

“We must sincerely reflect on the mishandling that occurred.”

“There were human errors and a lack of communication with the national teams.”

Unlike previous editions, there is no traditional athletes’ village at Aichi-Nagoya. Instead, athletes and officials are being housed across hotels, temporary accommodation and the Costa Serena cruise ship in Nagoya’s port.

Organisers chose this model partly to reduce costs and avoid building a large village that could become underused after the Games, local media has reported.

But spreading thousands of athletes and officials across different locations has created its own challenges.

Several delegations have reported problems with room allocations, check-ins and the quality of accommodation. Some athletes have complained that beds were too short, while Thai athletes were left waiting to board the cruise ship, with images on social media showing some sleeping on the lobby floor.

India also had to arrange additional hotel rooms after its accommodation allocation was reduced.

“We have already booked 18 rooms and will book another 10 today,” Indian chef de mission Sahdev Yadav said. “There is definitely a shortage of accommodation.”

An Indian mixed martial arts athlete, Varun Sanyal, reportedly spent more than 10 hours trying to sort out his accommodation despite having an accreditation card.

“I was like a total ghost in their system,” he said.

AINAGOC told The Independent in a statement: “The causes varied depending on the specific incident. However, the responsible teams took the necessary actions to address each issue, and operations have improved significantly.”

AINAGOC said they tightened booking deadlines, displayed bus departure times prominently at hotels, and made buses more flexible by having drivers wait for athletes where possible instead of leaving empty.

“We clearly informed the delegations that transportation booking requests or changes submitted after 3.00pm on the previous day would not be accepted, in order to prioritise competition operations and minimise the risk of errors.

“The day’s vehicle departure times were posted in large letters at each hotel’s Games Information Desk to ensure that athletes were informed.

“In response to the frequent dispatch of empty buses, the transportation operation was adjusted to adopt a more flexible approach, with drivers waiting for athletes whenever possible before departure.”

The problems were not limited to accommodation alone. There were serious ceremonial errors too that angered Japan’s neighbours and drew rebukes and jeers from others.

Before a South Korean men’s hockey match against Bangladesh on 18 September, organisers mistakenly played North Korea’s national anthem instead of South Korea’s.

“The incident was caused by human error, specifically the use of an incorrect audio file by an organising committee staff member. To prevent a recurrence, the Organising Committee implemented the following measures: National anthem files for subsequent days are no longer stored on the equipment, and standard checks are conducted before the anthem is played,” AINAGOC said.

On the makeshift cruise ship-turned-athletes’ village, a welcome ceremony featured figures portraying Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi Hideyoshi – historical figures closely associated with Aichi prefecture in Japan. However, the inclusion of Hideyoshi drew criticism in South Korea because he led Japan’s invasions of Korea in the 1590s.

The Korea Times wrote: “His appearance was inconsistent with the international event’s stated spirit of exchange and harmony.”

And then there were problems with accreditation, with some athletes waiting at airports because their details could not immediately be processed.

“There was an issue in getting accreditation for athletes at the airport during immigration. There were long queues with a lot of other nations there,” India’s Yadav told AFP.

“But these things happen, and we have got everything sorted. These are all teething problems and our focus is now on performance,” he added.

For athletes, such problems can have consequences. Time spent waiting for buses, rooms or accreditation can eat into sleep, meals, training and recovery.

Besides India’s Sindhu, another fellow Indian shuttler Unnati Hooda also questioned the scheduling issue at the Asian Games 2026 after her quarterfinal exit. “The scheduling could have been managed better,” Hooda said.

The Games have also had to contend with rough weather. Heavy rain disrupted tennis, surfing, cricket and archery, while the men’s cricket quarterfinals between Pakistan and Hong Kong and India and Afghanistan were washed out.

With no contingency slots available, Pakistan and India advanced because they had higher rankings. For Afghanistan, the decision was particularly frustrating after a similar rain-related abandonment at the 2023 Asian Games held in Hangzhou in China.

Afghanistan opener Mohammed Akram said: “The rain started yesterday, so hard luck for us. Our players are in form. But unfortunately the rain has ruined everything.”

The weather itself was beyond the organisers’ control. But the disruption raised questions about how much flexibility the Games had built into their schedules to deal with events being cancelled or delayed.

Typhoon Dujuan had already disrupted equestrian events in Tokyo earlier in the Games, while Typhoon Surigae later raised concerns about further disruption as it moved towards central Japan.

Given all the issues that have cropped up, the decision to not build a conventional athletes’ village has been under greater scrutiny.

The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) has, however, defended the model, saying an athletes’ village is not mandatory and that purpose-built facilities can become expensive “white elephants”.

“We had clear statistics about what is happening in the ​real estate values. We don’t want to leave a white elephant after the Games here,” Tayyab Ikram, head of the OCA Coordination Commission for Aichi-Nagoya, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“It was not easy discussions, but ​it was also not a compromise because we found a very unique kind of alternatives,” he said of the accommodation options.

The myriad issues at the 2026 Asian Games in Japan have also prompted broader questions about the country’s experience in organising major sporting events.

Shunya Hamada, a professor of marketing strategy at Bunkyo Gakuin University in Tokyo, told The Japan Times that Japan had long relied heavily on one major ad agency, Dentsu – a behemoth in Japan – for expertise in organising major sporting events.

“Japan’s hosting of large sporting events has long been like a one-legged batting stance – relying on one agency,” he told the outlet.

Dentsu, which has been involved in several major events including the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games in 2021. At the time, the New York Times said of Dentsu that “without it, the Tokyo Games could not have happened”.

Now questions are being raised over whether the decision to hand over operations of the Aichi-Nagoya Games to an overseas operator – in the absence of Dentsu – was the right one. The Japanese arm of French company GL Events was awarded a 63 billion yen (£300m) contract to manage operations for the Games, despite controversy.

According to Kyodo News, GL Events was chosen because it was “overwhelmingly cheaper”, according to a source close to the matter.

Dentsu’s withdrawal followed a bid-rigging and bribery scandal connected to its work on the Tokyo Olympics.

Hamada argued that Japan needed to develop expertise across other agencies and personnel so that knowledge of organising major international events was not concentrated in one company.

“Hosting sports events is not just about inviting foreign athletes to play in Japan,” Hamada said.