Fujinami Akari, Japan's top female wrestler [Yonhap]
Fujinami Akari, Japan's top female wrestler [Yonhap]

Paris Olympics gold medalist Fujinami suffers first loss in 9 years

Son pins her in 3 minutes 52 seconds after leading 10-0

Son won silver at last year's world championships in the 57kg class

Fujinami Akari, Japan's top female wrestler and a dominant force for nearly a decade, saw her 155-match winning streak end Saturday at the hands of North Korea's Son Il-sim.

Fujinami lost by fall to Son in the semifinals of the women's freestyle 57kg event at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, held at the Inabe Sports Center in Nagoya, Japan.

The 22-year-old is the reigning Olympic champion in the women's freestyle 53kg class from the 2024 Paris Games. She had not lost a single match in domestic or international competition since a defeat in her second year of middle school in 2017, and extended her winning streak to 155 matches with victories in the first round and quarterfinals of this tournament.

Against Son, however, Fujinami was on the back foot from the start. Son completed a takedown and then landed consecutive rolling techniques to close the first period 6-0. In the second period, she shut down Fujinami's attacks, added more points and, with the score at 10-0, pinned Fujinami's shoulders to the mat — just 3 minutes and 52 seconds into the bout.

It was Fujinami's first loss in an official competition in roughly nine years. She had moved up from the 53kg class to the 57kg class late last year and was aiming to win a second consecutive Asian Games gold in the heavier division.

Son, 25, is herself a world-class competitor. At last year's world championships in Zagreb, Croatia, she reached the final of the women's freestyle 57kg event before falling 2-3 to Helen Maroulis of the United States, taking the silver medal.


hong@heraldcorp.com