Asian Games 2026: Pawan Sehrawat replaces Tajinderpal Singh Toor as India’s male flag-bearer for opening ceremony

By Vipul Kashyap

Nagoya [Japan], September 19 (ANI): Indian shot put athlete Tajinderpal Singh Toor will likely be changed by kabaddi star Pawan Sehrawat because the male flag-bearer for the Asian Games opening ceremony on Saturday. 

As per the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), as a result of technical points, two-time Asian Games champion Tajinder will now not be the flagbearer and the Asian Games 2022 gold medalist, Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) star Pawan will likely be taking his place. 

Manu Bhaker, the Asian Games gold medalist and double Olympic medalist, will keep as the ladies’s flag-bearer for the Indian contingent. 

Manu and Tajinderpal have been initially introduced because the flag-bearers for the ladies’s contingent on Saturday.

Bhaker, who received two bronze medals on the Paris 2024 Olympics, will compete within the girls’s 10m air pistol, girls’s 25m pistol, and 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team. She made historical past in Paris by changing into the primary athlete from unbiased India to win two medals in a single version of the Olympic Games.

Pawan, now the male flag-bearer, will likely be aiming to steer India to a different gold medal in males’s kabaddi. Since the debut of the game in males’s group competitors on the 1990 Asian Games, India has received gold at eight out of 9 editions, aside from a bronze medal end within the 2018 version in Australia. In the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games version, India beat Iran 33-29 to seize the gold medal in males’s competitors. 

Toor, in the meantime, will goal to safe his third consecutive Asian Games gold medal in males’s shot put. He received gold on the 2018 Jakarta Games and the 2023 Hangzhou version, the place he recorded a throw of 20.36 metres.

Meanwhile, India’s Quimcy Joaquim Dsouza fought onerous within the Women’s Singles semifinal towards Indonesia’s Sumaya, happening 1-2 after a intently contested match in Teqball Women’s Singles – Semifinals – Match 1. Quimcy took the opening set 12-7 earlier than Sumaya levelled the competition by profitable the second set 12-9. The Indonesian participant then secured the third set 12-7. Quimcy will now compete for the Bronze Medal towards Yuina Sakamota of Japan on September 20.  (ANI)