India secures first athletics gold at Asian Games with win in women’s 4x400m relay
Kiran Pahal, Poovamma Machettira, Prachi and Vithya Ramraj won the women's 4x400m relay gold for India at the 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya on Tuesday, September 29, 2026. The quartet finished the race in 3:29.69 minutes to deliver India's first track and field gold of the ongoing Games.
The victory came at the Aichi-Nagoya athletics programme and left Bahrain second and China third in the final. The Indian quartet’s time of 3:29.69 minutes was recorded as the winning mark for the event.
Earlier in the session, Gurindervir Singh, Animesh Kujur, Sneha Sathyanarayana and Harita Bhadra earned a bronze medal in the 4x100m mixed relay final, posting a season-best time of 41.06 seconds. After Gulveer, the Indian quartet finished third with a time of 41.06 in the 4x400m mixed relay, having finished second behind China in the heats; China won the gold with a time of 40.78 seconds, while Thailand took silver after finishing in 40.87 seconds.
Pooja Singh cleared 1.84 metres in the women's high jump, a performance described as well below her personal best in the report, and that effort was sufficient to secure a bronze medal. The high jump podium placed her third with the 1.84m clearance.
Gulveer Singh added a bronze in the men's 5,000m with a time of 13:32.75, completing a hat-trick of podium finishes in Nagoya. He had earlier won silver medals in the men's 1,500m and 10,000m at these Games, making him the second Indian man and the fourth Indian overall to claim three track-and-field medals in a single edition; predecessors named in the report are Lavy Pinto (New Delhi 1951, 3 medals), P.T. Usha (Seoul, 1986, 4 medals) and K.M. Beenamol (Busan 2002, 3 medals).
In the men's 4x400m relay final, Dharamveer Choudhary, Manu Thekkinalil, Jay Kumar and Vishal Thennarasu clocked 3:01.61 to finish third behind Japan and Qatar. In the women's hammer throw, Tanya Chaudhary placed fourth with a 65.35m effort and Anushka Yadav was fifth with 64.56m.
Dev Kumar Meena set a national record in the men's pole vault with a clearance of 5.50m but finished seventh, and Pooja Olla and Mohammed Afsal were recorded as finishing seventh and eighth, respectively, in the men's and women's 800m.
The athletics results reported here were published on September 29, 2026, and form part of the track-and-field programme at the 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya.
