Takumi Hojo

is a Japanese triathlete who races for the NTT East and NTT West corporate teams. A three-time winner of the Japan Triathlon Championships (2018, 2019 and 2024), he won the men's individual triathlon at the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi–Nagoya, taking the first gold medal of the Games. He also won gold in the mixed relay at the 2022 Asian Games, the elite men's title at the 2025 Asian Triathlon Championships, and the 2023 World Triathlon Cup race in Yeongdo, the first World Cup victory by a Japanese man since 2007.

Early life

Hojo was born on 7 April 1996 in Kitamoto, Saitama Prefecture. He attended Kitamoto Municipal Kitamoto Junior High School and . He swam competitively from kindergarten to high school. While preparing for university entrance examinations, his parents found an online notice for a triathlon talent-identification time trial; he entered the trial, was designated a development athlete, and received a recruitment offer from the coach of the Nippon Sport Science University triathlon programme. After consulting his high-school swimming club adviser, who told him "you can always study, but only a handful of people can aim for the Olympics", he accepted the offer, entering the university in 2015 and taking up triathlon in earnest. He finished third at the Japanese junior championships in his first year.

Career

Hojo races for the NTT East and NTT West corporate teams.

National titles (2017–2021)

He finished fourth at the 2017 Japan Triathlon Championships. In 2018 he won Asian Cup races in Rayong, Thailand, and at Osaka Castle, took the under-23 title at the Asian championships in Gamagōri, and won the Japan Triathlon Championships for the first time on 14 October 2018 in 1:46:37. At the 2019 Asian Triathlon Championships in Gyeongju he finished second, the best-placed Japanese man, and contributed to Japan's victory in the mixed relay. He retained the national title on 6 October 2019 at Odaiba in 1:47:19, and topped the NTT Triathlon Japan rankings in each year from 2019 to 2021. In an October 2019 interview he named selection for the home Olympics in Tokyo as his goal.

During the COVID-19 pandemic he left Tokyo for his family home in Kitamoto, keeping up his swim training in a vinyl "home pool" measuring three metres by two, tethered with a rubber tube; he had bought the pool after seeing Daiya Seto's posts on Instagram. In November 2020 won the national championships on his debut, denying Hojo a third consecutive title; Hojo finished second. Hojo sought selection for the Tokyo Olympics, but the two men's places went to Nener and Makoto Odakura.

World Cup breakthrough (2022–2024)

On 26 March 2022 he won the Europe Triathlon Cup race in Quarteira, Portugal. On 5 August 2023 he won the World Triathlon Cup race in Yeongdo, South Korea, the first victory by a Japanese man in the series since Hirokatsu Tayama in 2007; the most recent Japanese winner before him had been Ai Ueda in 2019. Later that month he placed 20th at the Paris Olympic test event, the best-placed Japanese man, saying he had been targeting a top-three finish and the result "wasn't good enough". At the 2022 Asian Games, held in Hangzhou in the autumn of 2023, he combined with Nener, Yuko Takahashi and Yuka Sato to win the mixed relay gold, Japan's third consecutive victory in the event. He was not selected for the Paris Olympics either, saying he would carry the frustration "for the rest of [his] life". From August 2024 he trained under a foreign coach. In November he finished sixth at the World Triathlon Cup in Miyazaki in 54:29, and a week later won the Japan Championships for the third time, taking the Odaiba race in 1:46:44, 48 seconds clear of the runner-up.

Asian champion (2025–present)

He began the 2025 season by winning the Asia Triathlon Sprint Championships in Hong Kong on 5 April. At the end of August he won the elite men's title at the Asian Triathlon Championships in Istanbul, finishing in 1:47:32, eleven seconds ahead of Xirui Zhang of China. On 20 September 2026, at the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi–Nagoya, Hojo won the men's individual triathlon on a temporary course at Gamagōri in 52:56, nine seconds ahead of China's Zhang Xirui; Kazakhstan's Arlan Zhanabay finished third, a further six seconds back. It was the first gold medal of the Games and the first medal for the Japanese team.

On the same course exactly a year earlier, he had won the 2025 Asia Triathlon Cup race in 52:22, two seconds ahead of New Zealand's Saxon Morgan. The Games race was held over the sprint distance: a 750-metre swim, a 20 km bike ride and a 5 km run. Hojo left the water in fourth place and completed the bike leg in fifth before taking the lead early in the run, covering the final five kilometres in 15:06. The victory was Japan's fifth consecutive men's individual Asian Games title and earned Japan a quota place for the triathlon at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Afterwards Hojo said triathlon is "not very well known in Japan", described taking the host nation's first gold as an opportunity for the sport, and said he was "truly happy" to have seen the race through.

External links

• Takumi Hojo at the Japan Triathlon Union
• Takumi Hojo at World Triathlon