India’s Asian Games 2026 progress report: The success, unpleasant misses out on and sports that made or broke the project

The closing event at the Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium is still to come, with double gold medallist Neeru Dhanda set to be India’s flag bearer. India’s project at the 2026 Asian Games covered up on Saturday with a late gold rush in archery, battling and hockey.

India had actually sent out 495 professional athletes to Aichi-Nagoya, who provided their all– physically and psychologically– throughout 36 sporting disciplines over 15 days. The contingent returned with 85 medals– 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze– taping the country’s second-best efficiency at the Games.

India’s best-ever efficiency came at the Hangzhou Games in 2023, when it won 18 more medals, consisting of 7 more golds. On paper, that may paint a grim image for India. The country showed up in Japan with a contingent 25 % smaller sized than the one it had actually sent out to Hangzhou.

The opening days raised lots of issues, with a scarcity of medals, near-misses and heartbreaks. The professional athletes turned things around in the 2nd half, producing a medal rush that enabled India to close the Games on a high.

READ: India’s Asian Games crown altered hands: Just 8 of 28 golds were protected, while 13 brand-new champs emerged in Aichi-Nagoya

And before the focus moves totally to the accumulation for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, we take one last take a look at India’s Asian Games project and simplify sport by sport– where the project provided, and where it silently broke down.

The advancement, nevertheless, was available in recurve, with 17-year-old Kumkum Mohod topping off her project with 3 medals– 2 golds and a silver. This was the very first time India had actually won an Asian Games gold in recurve.

Boxing: India’s absolutely no golds in Hangzhou were transformed into 3 in Aichi-Nagoya. In general, India handled 6 medals, 2 more than in 2023, producing a much more effective project. The Asian Games were constantly a base test after the high of the CWG in July, however Lovlina Borgohain (75kg), Parveen Hooda (65kg) and Ankush Panghal (80kg) all turned their 2022 podium surfaces into gold.

Battling: Another sport that saw no golds in 2023 produced 2 top-of-the-podium surfaces this time, with Aman Sehrawat (57kg freestyle) and Sujeet Kalkal (65kg freestyle) becoming champs. Sujeet had actually likewise beat the Olympic champ en path to India’s very first fumbling gold at the Asiad given that 2018.

The larger significance of a six-medal project was that 2 of those medals came in Greco-Roman, with Nitesh Siwach ending up being the very first Indian in 64 years to reach the last in the discipline.

In general, India topped its finest fumbling project considering that Jakarta 1962, when it won 12 medals– 3 gold, 6 silver and 3 bronze.

Group supremacy: The golds throughout guys’s and females’s kabaddi and cricket were well on the cards even before the contingent had actually reached Japan. In both sports, India have actually been the indisputable champs in Asia. In cricket, that supremacy encompasses the world, particularly in the T20 format.

The males’s hockey gold was likewise on anticipated lines, however what the females’s group attained was among the single finest stories of the Games– ending a 44-year wait on an Asiad gold.

Golf: The historical silver in 2023, won by Aditi Ashok, developed into a historical gold from Pranavi Urs as the Indian held her nerve after yielding a three-shot over night result in clinch the females’s private title.

In general, India won 2 medals, with the other being a females’s group silver including Ashok and Diksha Dagar.

Sports: Athletics is possibly the clearest case of numbers not informing the entire story. On paper, India won 24 medals and produced one gold– below 6 golds in 2022– with the distinction being available in a shift towards silver and bronze this time.

India likewise broke 5 nationwide records throughout the competitors and produced numerous historical. Sawan Barwal ended India’s 44-year await an Asian Games males’s marathon medal, Sarvesh Kushare won the country’s very first males’s high dive medal given that 1970, while Baranica Elangovan ended up being India’s very first Asian Games medallist in females’s pole vault.

India likewise missed out on hurt javelin star Neeraj Chopra, who had actually won gold last time, however Yashvir Singh and Rohit Yadav offseted that with a 2-3 surface.

Badminton: From the Hangzhou highs, where India won 3 medals, consisting of a gold, the contingent might handle just a singular bronze this time, which was available in the males’s group occasion. The most frustrating outcome originated from protecting champs Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, who suffered an opening-round exit versus a set ranked 36 locations listed below them.

Table tennis: Both groups left before the medal rounds. The guys’s group lost in the group phase, while the ladies’s group suffered a quarter-final defeat. India’s only table tennis medal at this Asiad was a bronze, won by the Manush Shah– Diya Chitale blended doubles set, who were beaten by China in the semifinal.

Squash: India won 2 gold medals at the 2022 Games however returned with none this time. Anahat Singh and Abhay Singh based on the brink of history in the songs occasions, however both lost in the last, while the guys’s and blended doubles title-holders lost in the semifinals.

Shooting: Perhaps the most significant frustration originated from shooting. India’s the majority of embellished sport fell from 22 medals, consisting of 7 golds, in 2022 to 15 medals, consisting of 3 golds, this time. A number of private gold competitors– the ladies’s 10m air handgun, the ladies’s 50m rifle 3 positions and the guys’s trap group– missed out on the podium totally.