434 athletes registered for 20th Asian Games

KATHMANDU: Nepal has registered 434 athletes across 32 sports for the 20th Asian Games to be held in Japan next year.

Issuing a press release on Wednesday, the Nepal Olympic Committee (NOC) said the ‘Entry by Number’ list sent to the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) includes 195 women and 239 men athletes.

Entry by number is a final count of the total athletes participating in the Games from each team. The deadline for ‘entry by number’ registration was September 16. The first phase of entries began on July 18. According to the Olympic Council of Asia, participating teams must send the complete namelist of participants by July 1, 2026.

The 20th Asian Games will be held from September 19 to October 4 next year in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan.

Although NOC initially registered the number of athletes for 30 sports only, it later sent the number of athletes for football and taekwondo as well.

Nepal currently has two NOCs – one recognized by the ministry and the other by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the OCA. The two committees had sent a separate list of sports for participation to the OCA.

“Although we had sought the number of participating athletes from the ministry and the National Sports Council (NSC), we didn’t get any response from them,” NOC said in the statement. “Nevertheless, we sent initial entries based on numbers provided by the respective federations.”

Nepal currently has two NOCs – one recognized by the ministry and the other by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the OCA. The NOC recognized by the ministry is led by Dhruba Bahadur Pradhan, while the other, supported by IOC and OCA, is led by Rajeev Shrestha.

The two committees had sent a separate list of sports for participation to the OCA. However, the OCA recognized the list forwarded by the Shrestha-led NOC.

Nepal sent 253 athletes to the 2023 ASIAD in Hangzhou, China, where it won a silver in Karate and a bronze in women’s Kabaddi.

Nepal has registered 32 sports for the 2026 ASIAD – Athletics, Archery, Badminton, Basketball, Boxing, Breakdancing, Baseball and Softball, Rafting and Canoeing, Kurash, Cricket, Cycling, E-sports, Golf, Hockey, Judo, Kabaddi, Karate, Modern Pentathlon, Rugby, Skating, Sports Climbing, Squash, Soft Tennis, Swimming, Tennis, Table Tennis, Volleyball, Weightlifting, Wrestling, Wushu, Football and Taekwondo