India finish Asian Para Games with a record 114 medals, including 30 gold, and place fourth

India finished fourth in the table. The bronze count of 49 is the largest of the three columns and shows the depth of the squad: nearly half of the medals came from athletes who stood on the podium without winning the event.

The Games, the fifth edition of the Asian Para Games, were played in Aichi-Nagoya, and India's athletes competed in 11 sports, which is where the classification codes in the results come from. In para sport a letter and a number mark the type and degree of impairment: for example, T12 is a track class for athletes with a visual impairment, T47 is for those with an upper-limb impairment, and SH1 is a shooting class. The codes matter because each class has its own medals, so an athlete can win more than one event, and a country with many athletes across classes collects more medals.

Who won what

Mona Agarwal won two golds, one of them in the women's 10 m air rifle SH1, and was one of India's two flag bearers at the closing ceremony. During the Games she also set a world record of 357.5 in the 50 m rifle three positions SH1 event. The other was Nishad Kumar, who won two golds in athletics, including the men's long jump T47.

Simran Sharma took two athletics golds, in the women's 100 m and 200 m T12. Dilip Gavit and Pranav Soorma also won two golds each in athletics. These six athletes alone account for 12 of India's 30 gold medals, and both flag bearers had won two golds each, which made them natural choices for the closing ceremony. In archery, Sheetal Devi came away with three medals, two gold and one silver. Midway through the Games, an Indian sweep of the javelin podium led by Sumit Antil gave the contingent a lift.

Records noted for Indian competitors during the Games include a men's F37/38 javelin throw of 60.49 m, a men's T44/62/64 400 m time of 52.28 seconds and a mixed compound archery team ranking-round score of 1,402.

In the first days of the Games, India were at around 35 to 37 medals and sixth in the table. The squad then picked up pace in athletics and shooting, where the larger number of classifications means more events and more medals. That pattern is typical for para sport, and it is why the number of events a country is strong in often matters more than the star names. By the time the table showed 37 medals, India had 12 gold, 17 silver and 18 bronze. The final count of 30 gold, 35 silver and 49 bronze means the squad added 18 golds, 18 silvers and 31 bronzes over the rest of the week. Gold made up about 26 per cent of the medals, silver about 31 per cent and bronze about 43 per cent.

Why the total matters

The target of about 100 had been set after the Hangzhou campaign, when India first crossed that figure. Going past it a second time suggests the result is not a one-off but the result of a bigger pool of athletes and more events being contested by Indian competitors.

The record also changes what the next cycle will look like. With 114 medals now the mark to beat, the pressure moves to the sports with the highest returns, such as athletics, shooting and archery, and to the smaller sports where India has only a handful of entries. The success also arrives with a clear reminder: medals are won in the Games, but the support system that allows an athlete to reach one runs for the other four years.