Counting down 21 of today's top Asian athletes

When events like the World Cup, it's never a bad idea to talk about the world's best of the best—and with Japan, South Korea, and Australia having memorable performances at the tournament —it might be time to count down some of the top Asian athletes in today's biggest sports.

Born in Osaka, this Japanese tennis player who lives in the United States was the first Asian player to reach the top position in the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranking.

Osaka has four Grand Slam titles to her name and can boast that she was the champion of the United States Open in 2018 and 2020 as well as the Australia Open in 2019 and 2021.

Naomi Osaka is also currently the highest-paid female athlete in the world, in addition to having created its own representation agency, Evolve, together with Stuart Duguid.

Within Asian football, South Korea is one of the leading countries and Son Heung-min may just be there Lionel Messi. Heung-min is a striker for English Tottenham and captain of the South Korean national team.

At just 16 years old, Son Heung-min was already well-known in Europe and was signed to a German team in Hamburg, from which he went on to play for Bayer Leverkusen as well as Crystal Palace and Tottenham Hotspur.

In the 2021-2022 Premier League Son Heung-min was the top scorer with 23 goals, the same as Liverpool's Mohamed Salah.

Eileen Gu is a Chinese-American skier who also works as a professional model. She won two golds and one silver at the last 2022 Beijing Olympic Games and has become a true phenomenon.

Gu was born in San Francisco (United States) but competes internationally under the Chinese flag.

At just 18 years old, Gu became the first woman to achieve a forward double cork 1440, a move that has become one of her staples.

Born in Yokohama, this 2.06-meter-tall power forward is one of Asia's few basketball players that can keep up with China's Yao Ming legacy in the NBA.

Watanabe started playing in the United States from the bottom, in the George Washington University Colonials and made the leap to professional play in 2018 when he signed a dual contract with the Memphis Grizzlies to play in their affiliate, the Memphis Hustle.

In December 2020, Watanabe signed with the Toronto Raptors and, in 2022, as a free agent, he joined the Brooklyn Nets to reinforce their outside line.

A specialist in freestyle and butterfly, this Chinese swimmer has given the world a lot to talk about in the last two Summer Olympic Games in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, during the first of which she made her Olympic debut at just 18 years old.

In Tokyo 2020, four medals were hung around Zhang Yufei's neck. He won two gold medals in the 200-meter butterfly and 4x200-meter freestyle, and two silvers in the 100-meter butterfly and 4x100-meter mixed medley.

In addition, Zhang Yufei won 6 bronzes in the World Championships between 2015 and 2022 and 3 bronzes, 1 silver, and 1 gold in the World Championships, between 2014 and 2021.

Born in 1988 in Hakuba, Akito Watabe competes in Nordic combined skiing and, in the absence of Olympic gold, Watabe has won two silvers and two bronzes from the 2009 World Championship in Liberec (Czech Republic).

This Filipino weightlifter made history for her country when she become the Filipino Olympic medalist to win gold at the 2020 Tokoyo games.

At the Rio 2016 games, Diaz won silver in the under 53 kg category, ending a 20-year drought for the Philippines without Olympic medals.

After winning the Asian F3 Championship and earning the third spot in Formula 2 in 2021, Guanyu Zhou spent 2022 in Formula 1 behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo as his team's starting driver.

In his debut race in Bahrain, Zhou won his first point by finishing tenth and scoring another point in Canada before suffering a spectacular accident at Silverstone in the United Kingdom.

At only 23 years old, Zhou has a bright future ahead of him and will almost certainly become a top performing Asian athlete.

An San is a prodigy of just 21 years old who competes in recurve bow championships. In her first Olympic participation at the 2020 Tokyo  Games, San won three gold medals in the individual women's and mixed team categories.

San is also known for the controversy around her decision to wear her hair short, something that has given rise to many detractors within her own country for not complying with South Korea's female beauty standards.

This midfielder is one of the great hopes of Japanese football. Take Kubo is a young man with hints of a veteran who already sports stripes in his country's national team.

Kubo plays in the Spanish League for Real Sociedad, where he was transferred by Real Madrid - although the Madrid team saved their options to recover him.

After winning two bronze medals at the badminton World Championships, in Glasgow, United Kingdom (2017) and Basel, Switzerland (2019), China's Chen Yufei would win gold in the individual category at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He is without a doubt one of the biggest sports prodigies to come out of China since Yao Ming.

Ayumu Hirano is an athlete who, despite his youth, has already made a name for himself in the world of snowboarding and is proving that he can make history for Asian athletes in winter sports.

During his many appearances at the Winter X Games, an annual extreme sports event, Hirano was credited with two gold medals and two silvers in the 'Superpipe' event, achieved between 2013 and 2022.

But all this falls pails in comparison to Hirano's Olympic successes: two silver medals in 'Halfpipe' in Sochi (2014) and Pyeongchang (2018) and a gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Games.

Born in Luquan, Gong Lijiao is a Chinese shot putter who achieved glory at the Tokyo 2020 Games by winning her first gold in her fourth Olympic participation, beating the big favorites in the competition and achieving a distance of 20.58 meters, the best mark in five years.

In Beijing 2008 Lijiao won bronze and in London 2012 silver. In 2020 Lijiao finally won gold in Tokyo.

Lijiao also won two gold medals at the World Championships in London in 2017 and Doha in 2019.

Yuki Tsunoda is a very young driver who at only 22 years old is already racing in Formula 1. He won the Japanese Formula 4 Championship in 2019 and placed third in Formula 2 in 2020.

Since 2019 Tsunoda has been a member of the Red Bull junior team and, in December 2020, it was announced that he signed with AlphaTauri to play in the 2021 season in F1. Tsunoda scored a total of 32 points and finished 14th in the drivers' championship, a good start use as he continues climbing in the Formula 1 elite.

In any list of sports prodigies in Asia, this Paralympic representative could not be missing since Yui Kamiji is one of the great names in all of Japanese sports.

To Kamiji's credit, she has 26 major titles and two Paralympic medals, one silver and one bronze from the Tokyo 2020 Games. A feat only surpassed by her previous mark, which was an individual bronze at the Rio 2016 Games.

This Japanese bronze medalist was proclaimed world figure skating champion for the first time in March in Montpellier, after maintaining the lead in the free skate that she had already enjoyed since the short.

Kaori Sakamoto won two bronze medals in Tokyo and can boast of having won gold in the Four Continents Championship that was held in Taipei (Taiwan) in 2018.

Of Beninese descent on his father's side and Japanese on his mother's, Rui Hachimura was born in Toyama Japan, and is the biggest Asian forward in the NBA today.

In his childhood, Hachimura played baseball but he quickly switched to basketball where he triumphed and reached the top of his professional game.

Hachimura played with Gonzaga Bulldogs in his college career until he was drafted ninth overall in the 2019 NBA Draft by the Washington Wizards.

Momiji Nishiya made history in 2021 when she won her first Olympic gold medal in women's street skateboarding at the Tokyo Games... at just 13 years old!

Nishiya, with a score of 15.26, became the first Japanese Olympic champion in the sport of skateboarding.

Kei Nishikori has been fighting on the court for years and is also considered the best Asian tennis player in history and had major rivalries with Milos Raonic and David Ferrer.

The great success of Kei Nishikori's career was surely the bronze medal he won at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, after beating Rafael Nadal 6-2, 6-7, 6-3.