Naorem Roshibina Devi wins silver in women’s sanda 60kg at Asian Games 2026
Naorem Roshibina Devi settled for silver in the women’s sanda 60kg final at the 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya on September 24, losing 0-2 to China’s Zhang Xiaoyu at the Aichi Prefectural Martial Arts Hall. Zhang secured both rounds with identical 5-0 scores to take gold.
Roshibina reached the final of the women’s sanda 60kg event after progressing through the knockout rounds at the Aichi Prefectural Martial Arts Hall. She previously won silver at the 2022 Hangzhou Games and bronze at the 2018 Jakarta Games. Roshibina was born on December 30, 2000, in Manipur’s Bishnupur district and is 25 years old.
Her route to the final included a 5-0 quarter-final win over Macao’s Chu Man Sin, a result that guaranteed her at least a bronze under sanda’s format. She then defeated Indonesia’s Thania Kusumaningtyas 2-0 in the semi-final. Earlier in the competition she beat Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy, the 2023 world champion.
Roshibina’s place in India’s squad was uncertain in the weeks before the Games after a knee injury a year earlier and a loss to Divyanshi Choudhary in the national trials, which left her out of India’s seven-member wushu squad cleared by the Sports Ministry on August 22. Choudhary was later ruled out after suffering a partial high-grade ACL tear at the SCO Wushu Sanda Championship in Hubei, China; that injury worsened after she rejoined the national camp in August. The Wushu Association of India named Roshibina as Choudhary’s replacement on medical grounds.
Roshibina’s silver was India’s 14th medal at the Asian Games 2026 and the country’s second on Day 6. Earlier on Thursday, Satnam Singh and Salman Khan won bronze in the men’s double sculls in 6:13.25, finishing 3.48 seconds behind China’s gold-winning pair Yi Xudi and Nie Yide. In the men’s single sculls, Balraj Panwar finished fourth in 6:54.80, ending 15 seconds behind gold medallist Zhiwei Deng of China.
No other Indian woman has won three consecutive Asian Games medals in wushu, making the 25-year-old Roshibina the first to achieve that feat.
