Hosoda secured gold after racing patiently in mild conditions, keeping in touch with the leading seven after the swim as the cycling began, before making his move to power into the lead and remain ahead of his main rivals, Ju Seok Kim, Hirokatsu Tayama, Min Ho Heo and Ryosuke Yamamoto, until the end.

"I really wanted it, I felt very tired during the race," Hosoda said.

"I felt heavy in the swim and struggled on the bike.

"My style is always to go hard for the first one or two kilometres, but today I felt so tired so I went a little bit slow.

"When I was alone in the front in the run I thought, ok, I will just keep doing this and I started to pull away.

"First ten seconds then 20 seconds and I thought I am going to win."

Yamamoto came second, and he praised Hosoda, adding that he was "really happy about the race."

Korean Heo pulled away from Tayama towards the end to clinch bronze and prevent Japan claiming a clean sweep of the medals.

In the women's race, Akane Tsuchihashi and Mariko Adachi went into the lead after the swim, with Niwata taking the lead towards the end of the bike.


It was during the run though that Niwata claimed victory after an astonishing turn of pace to leave closest rival Tomoko Sakimoto to claim silver.

The 40-year-old Olympian said: "It's my first time in Chinese Taipei and I love it, so I had a good feeling coming into today and thought it would be a good day for me today and I won."

Mariko Adachi took bronze, and Japan continued to dominate in the junior races, where Takanori Sugihara took gold in the men's, while Shiruba Taniguchi and Ryosuke Maeda came second and third.

In the women's, Yuka Sato took gold, with Fumika Matsumoto and Karin Chibana taking silver and bronze respectively.

In the under-23 category Korea's Dan Bi Hong claimed a rare non-Japanese medal with silver behind Yuko Takahashi, while Aoi Kuramoto came third.

In the men's, Kohei Tsubaki, Jumpei Furuya and Syogo Ishitsuka claimed yet another Japanese 1-2-3.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]