SportsPara sport
Sumit Antil leads javelin sweep as India finish Asian Para Games with record 114 medals
Nine golds on the last day of competition for India in Aichi-Nagoya took the haul to 30 gold, 35 silver and 49 bronze, the country's best at the Games.
Key points
- India finished with 114 medals, 30 gold, 35 silver and 49 bronze, a record at the Asian Para Games.
- Sumit Antil retained his javelin title, leading an Indian clean sweep of the podium.
- India won 26 medals, nine of them gold, on Friday, their final day of competition.
Sumit Antil did what he came to Japan to do. The defending champion retained his Asian Para Games javelin title on Friday afternoon, with Mahendra Gurjar taking silver and Sandip Sanjay Sargar bronze for an all-Indian podium, and the sweep helped close India’s campaign in Aichi-Nagoya with a record 114 medals.
India finished with 30 gold, 35 silver and 49 bronze. They won 26 medals on Friday, nine of them gold, and leave the Games fourth in the table behind China, Japan and Uzbekistan, two golds clear of South Korea and four ahead of Iran. No Indian team has won more medals at the Asian Para Games.
There are a few events left on Saturday’s final day, but India have no entries in them, so the only thing still to decide is whether the table changes around them.
Antil’s afternoon
Antil, competing in the combined F42-44 and F61-64 class, threw 72.46m for gold. With Gurjar and Sargar alongside him, India took every medal in the event.
His win capped a remarkable Friday at the Mizuho Park athletics stadium. In the morning Sandeep won the men’s 400m T64 in a world record 52.28 seconds, with Ajay Kumar taking bronze in a Games record 53.61. Within the hour Haney threw 60.49m in the javelin F37/38, another world record. Pranav Soorma won the club throw with a Games record of 32.87m.
There were silvers for Parmod Bijarnia in the 1500m T46 in 4:09.65 and for Nimisha Chakkungalparambil in the long jump T47. Navdeep and Rakeshbhai Bhatt took bronze, in the javelin F40/41 and the 200m T37.
Para athletics ended as India’s best sport by a distance, with 65 medals, 12 more than in 2023.
Golds across the venues
The other venues kept pace. In shooting, Mona Agarwal won the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions SH1 with a world record 357.5, her second gold of the Games after a Games record in the 10m air rifle standing SH1 earlier in the week.
In para badminton, Nitesh Kumar beat Pramod Bhagat in an all-Indian final in the men’s singles SL3, and Naveen Sivakumar won the SL4 title. Thulasimathi Murugesan had the busiest day of anyone: gold in the women’s doubles SL3-SU5, and silvers in the women’s singles SU5 and, with Nitesh, the mixed doubles.
Archers Harvinder Singh and Vijay Sundi beat China 5-1 for the men’s recurve doubles gold, while Bhawna Choudhary and Pooja Jatyan took silver in the women’s event. India’s para archers finished with six medals.
In the pool, Himanshu Nandal won bronze in the men’s 100m freestyle S11, his third bronze of the meet. India’s swimmers ended with 11 medals.
What comes next
Mona Agarwal and Nishad Kumar will carry India’s flag at the closing ceremony.