Sex Games cost players

Jakarta – Four Japanese basketball players were sent home from the Asian Games in disgrace for paying prostitutes for sex as the regional Olympics was hit by scandal yesterday.

The players were spotted in a notorious red light district of Jakarta in their national jerseys, JOC officials said, adding that the four had been ordered to leave immediately.

News that Yuya Nagayoshi, Takuya Hashimoto, Takuma Sato and Keita Imamura had been booted out will come as an embarrassment for Japan, who will host the Olympics in two years’ time.

“I just feel a sense of shame,” Japan’s chef-de-mission Yasuhiro Yamashita told reporters. “We deeply apologise and intend to give the athletes thorough guidance from now on.”

The basketball players had dinner after leaving the Games village last Thursday and are believed to have been solicited by a pimp to go to a hotel with women, Yamashita added.

They “paid for the services of prostitutes”, Yamashita said, according to Japan’s Kyodo news agency.

The story broke after the four were spotted in the red light district by a newspaper reporter.

“I would like to humbly apologise to the Japanese public, the JOC and everyone who supports basketball for this deplorable incident,” Japan basketball chief Yuko Mitsuya said in a statement.

“We will decide on the appropriate punishment for the four players once we have heard all the facts. We need to work harder to make sure this kind of scandal does not happen again.”

At the last Asian Games in 2014, Japan were forced to send swimmer Naoya Tomita home after he was caught on video stealing a journalist’s camera from the pool deck.

Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, president of the Olympic Council of Asia, the Games’ governing body, said the latest incident would serve as a warning to other athletes.

“At the end of the day, representing your country isn’t only about winning medals,” he said yesterday.