Aichi-Nagoya, October 23: On the penultimate day of the Asian Para Games, India’s athletes found another gear. Five golds in a single day, two of them with world records, took the country’s tally to 103 medals, 27 of them gold, and put them within reach of their best-ever haul.

Mona Agarwal does it again.

The day’s headline performance came from the shooting range. Mona Agarwal won her second gold of the Games in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions SH1 final, setting a world record with a score of 357.5. China’s Cuiping Zhang took silver, 3.8 points behind.

It added to the gold she won on the opening day, in the women’s 10m air rifle standing SH1 event. That day, Mona and Avani Lekhara finished one-two, and Mona’s winning score of 250 set an Asian Para Games record, passing Avani’s 249.6 from the 2023 Hangzhou edition.

A world record in the javelin too

Haney threw 60.49 metres to win the men’s javelin F37/38 and break the world record. He had also won the javelin gold at Hangzhou in 2023, so Friday’s win was a reminder of how consistently he has performed.

The rest of India’s golds

The other medals came from across the sports.

• Para badminton: Nitesh Kumar won the men’s singles SL3 gold.
• Para archery: Harvinder Singh and Vijay Sundi won the men’s recurve doubles gold. Harvinder is already known as the man who won India’s first Paralympic archery medals, a bronze at Tokyo 2020 and a gold at Paris 2024.
• Para athletics: Sandeep won the men’s 400m T64.

India also picked up a bronze in men’s doubles MD4 para table tennis through Jehan Madan and Shubham Wadhwa.

Where India stand

After the day’s play, India had 103 medals, made up of 27 gold, 33 silver and 43 bronze, and were fourth in the standings. China led by a long way with more than 340 medals, with Japan and Uzbekistan ahead of India in the other podium positions.

India’s 27 golds match the gold count that some outlets cite as their best at an Asian Para Games, from Hangzhou in 2023. Other sources put the Hangzhou final at 29 gold, 31 silver and 51 bronze, a total of 111 medals. Whichever figure is right, the Indian team is close to the all-time best and needs to find only a handful of medals on the final day to break the overall record.

A smaller team, a bigger result

The achievement looks bigger given the size of the squad. India sent 168 athletes to Japan, far fewer than the 303 who went to Hangzhou, because para chess, para rowing and para canoeing were not part of the Indian contingent due to quota cuts. A total of 489 medal events are being contested across 19 sports.

What to watch

The final day of competition, Saturday, October 24, is India’s last chance to push the tally past the Hangzhou record and add to the golds. A few finals in athletics, archery, and badminton could make the difference.

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