India Secures Gold Medals in Relay and Compound Archery at Asian Games

On a rain-slicked Tuesday night at Nagoya’s Mizuho Stadium, India’s women’s 4x400m relay team lined up for a race that had been framed around a single opponent. Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Naser, the Olympic silver medallist and individual 400m champion at these Games, was the anchor the field had been dreading. She took the baton for the final lap with a lead, her stride projecting the inevitability that had defined her season. Vithya Ramraj, India’s anchor, had spent the preceding laps watching her teammates — Kiran Pahal, Poovamma MR, and Prachi — build a margin designed to survive Naser’s closing speed. The plan, as Pahal later recalled, was explicit: give Vithya 50 metres (The Hindu). It held. India crossed in 3:28.45, securing a seventh relay gold in eight Asian Games editions and denying Naser the anchor-leg spectacle the stadium had anticipated (The Hindu).

The victory carried weight beyond the track. For Pahal, 26, the gold arrived four years after her father, Om Prakash, a farmer from Ghummad village in Haryana’s Sonepat district, passed away. He had once gifted her a gold necklace, telling her it was a placeholder until she won a medal of her own. She wore that chain beneath her India vest in Nagoya, tucking it away before the final (The Hindu). Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the quartet by name on Wednesday, marking the relay as a centrepiece of the day’s haul (PIB).

By Wednesday morning, the focus had shifted to the archery range at Okazaki Chuo Sogo Park, where India completed a clean sweep of the three compound team titles. The women’s trio of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Chikitha Taniparthi, and Prithika Pradeep opened the account by equalling the world record of 238 in the final against China, defending the crown they won in Hangzhou (The Hindu). The score matched the mark set by South Korea at the 2014 Incheon Games (Google News India). The final was preceded by a half-hour rain delay caused by the late arrival of the Chinese team bus; India, asked to shoot first against Korea in the semifinal, accepted without disruption. Coach Jiwanjot Singh later noted the squad had replicated the Okazaki range — down to the flag positions and background music — at a training camp in Sonepat, including wet-weather sessions that neutralised Tuesday’s downpour (The Hindu).

Chikitha returned hours later to pair with Sahil Jadhav in the mixed team final against Korea. The match swung on a final-end sequence where a 9 from Chikitha left India needing two 10s; Sahil delivered his, Chikitha followed with a 10, and the shoot-off finished 158-157 after both Indians hit the centre ring while Korea’s Choi Eun Gyu managed a 9 (Google News India). The win carried a 2028 Los Angeles Olympic quota place, the first for India in compound mixed team (Google News India).

The men’s compound team — Kushal Dalal, Sahil Jadhav, and Ganesh Mani Ratnam Thirumuru — closed the hat-trick by overturning a two-point deficit against China. Trailing 116-118 after three ends, India posted three 10s in the fourth while China’s Jiahao Liao dropped an 8, sealing a 238-237 win with three Chinese arrows unshot (Google News India). It was India’s third consecutive Asian Games gold in the event.

Earlier Wednesday, the shooting range delivered the day’s first gold. Kynan Chenai and Neeru Dhanda broke the Asian Games record in trap mixed team with a score of 34, surpassing the previous Games mark of 30. Qatar took silver with 32, China bronze with 23 (Google News India). It was India’s first-ever gold in the discipline at the Asiad and the ninth of the campaign for the shooting contingent, which now stands at 15 medals overall (Google News India). Neeru had already made history Tuesday as the first Indian woman to win an individual trap gold at the Games, adding a team silver alongside Aashima Ahlawat and Manisha Keer (Google News India).

The medal ledger reflected the breadth of the day. By evening, India’s tally stood at 56 medals — 9 gold, 21 silver, 26 bronze — according to the official tracker (Google News India). Other sources placed the count at 60 with 10 gold after the men’s compound victory (The Hindu). The discrepancy underscores the fluidity of a programme still unfolding across athletics, boxing, shooting, archery, squash, and hockey through October 4. In boxing, Priya Ghanghas settled for bronze in the women’s 60kg after a 1-4 semifinal loss to China’s Yang Chengyu, while Kapil Pokhariya took bronze in the men’s 90kg (The Hindu). In wrestling, Sunil Kumar opened India’s account with a bronze-medal bout win (The Hindu).