Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games plagued by ongoing transport and operational failures

Shuttle buses repeatedly late to carry athletes to venues

India's shooting team faces up to 2-hour commute from accommodation

Media transport breaks down at Korea-Japan volleyball match

South Korean men's basketball player Yeo Jun-seok, who said no bus came on the day his team was set to travel. [Yeo Jun-seok SNS capture]

The 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games have been beset by a string of failures in accommodation, transport and event management, with organizational problems that surfaced at the outset showing no sign of letting up. Most recently, transport breakdowns delayed the start of competition itself.

A women's volleyball placement match between Vietnam and Indonesia on Monday was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. but kicked off 30 minutes late after the shuttle bus assigned to carry the Vietnamese team arrived an hour and 15 minutes behind schedule.

Vietnam had already suffered a separate transport mishap at these Games. On Sept. 15, an organizing committee shuttle dropped athletes at the wrong hotel, forcing them to haul their luggage and equipment to their actual accommodation on their own.

The burden of long-distance travel has also emerged as a concern. India's shooting team said it must travel more than 70 kilometers from its accommodation to the venue, with actual journey times reaching up to two hours. The organizing committee had estimated the trip would take about 70 minutes, but traffic conditions have pushed that figure far higher.

South Korea's delegation was not spared. The men's basketball team had no vehicle show up to take them to a training session Sunday morning ahead of their gold-medal match against Japan, forcing the cancellation of a scheduled shooting practice. The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee lodged a formal protest with the organizing committee and the Olympic Council of Asia.

A container-style prefabricated accommodation complex near Nagoya Port, photographed Sept. 11 ahead of the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games opening. The Games' policy of relying on existing facilities — including portable lodgings and a docked cruise ship — has exposed a series of problems for athletes, including damaged rooms and water leaks. [Yonhap]

The transport chaos has not been limited to athletes. Nikkan Sports reported Monday that no signage at Nagoya Station directed media to the official shuttle stop for the Main Media Center, leaving journalists struggling to find their bus. Even on-site staff were unable to provide accurate information, pointing to wider gaps in the Games' guidance systems.

In some cases, the buses themselves simply did not come. According to Tokyo Sports, journalists who had finished covering the women's volleyball match between South Korea and Japan on Monday waited for the organizing committee's bus back to Nagoya Station, but the vehicle never arrived within the scheduled window.

Operational blunders have also marred competition itself. According to local media including Tokai TV, North Korea's national anthem was mistakenly played instead of South Korea's before the men's hockey match between South Korea and Bangladesh in Gifu Prefecture on Friday. The wrong anthem played through to its end without being stopped, and an apology over the public address system came only about two minutes later.

The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee sent a letter of protest to the organizing committee, stating that playing the wrong national anthem must never happen at an international multi-sport event. The organizing committee issued a formal apology and pledged to prevent a recurrence.

South Korea's delegation had encountered transport problems from the moment it arrived. When the team landed in Japan Thursday, a shuttle allocation error by the organizing committee left athletes waiting at the airport for hours. Some took more than five hours to reach their accommodation, and some members of the rowing team ultimately paid out of pocket for taxis.

South Korea's under-23 football team also arrived at the wrong venue on Sept. 15 — a baseball stadium — after their bus driver misidentified the destination, reaching the correct ground about 30 minutes late ahead of their match against Qatar. Earlier, a vehicle failed to pick up head coach Lee Min-sung for his official press conference, and on Wednesday a bus to take the team to training was never dispatched.

A cruise ship serving as athlete accommodation at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. [AP]

The transport failures come on top of accommodation problems that have dogged the Games from the start. To cut costs, the organizing committee abandoned plans for a large athletes' village and instead dispersed delegations across hotels, a cruise ship and container-style temporary lodgings. As participation grew beyond initial projections, some delegations waited long periods to receive room assignments, and errors including male and female athletes being assigned to the same room were also reported, according to Nikkan Sports and other Japanese outlets.

Despite saving on village construction, the Games' overall costs have ballooned well beyond early estimates. The combined budget for the Asian Games and Asian Para Games was projected at around 100 billion yen ($637 million) when the bid was won, but is now expected to reach approximately 370 billion yen, driven by rising prices, higher labor costs and repeated changes to the original plan.

What began as an accommodation crisis has spread to athlete transport, training disruptions, competition scheduling, event management and media logistics. With organizational failures large and small continuing well after the opening ceremony, the Aichi-Nagoya organizing committee's ability to run a decentralized Games without a traditional athletes' village is now squarely under scrutiny.

yjc@heraldcorp.com