There are many races and competitions happening everywhere and somebody asked me the other day, how can I say “I came second” in Japanese? So today, I will talk about that.

The counter for ranking is 位 （い ） and this sound does not change with numbers, so 2nd, 3rd, 4th… are ni-i, san-i, yon-i,… respectively.

So “I came second!” is either

二位になりました。or

二位でした。

If you came first, you can say “I won” in English, so in Japanese too you can say:

優勝（ゆうしょう）しました。

as well as

一位になりました。

Being second can be described in English as “runners-up” and in that case you can say:

準優勝（じゅんゆうしょう）しました。or

準優勝（じゅんゆうしょう）でした。

The former has more “happy” notion and the latter has more “disappointing” notion.