Chandigarh [India], September 19 (ANI): Haryana Sports Minister Gaurav Gautam on Saturday prolonged his finest needs to athletes from the state collaborating within the Asian Games 2026, saying 80 sportspersons from Haryana will characterize India on the continental multi-sport occasion.
Speaking to reporters, Gautam mentioned the athletes would carry the Indian flag with pleasure in Japan and expressed confidence of their performances.
‘The Asian Games are beginning on September 19, with 80 athletes from Haryana collaborating. They will wave the Indian tricolour in Japan and return to India with medals,’ Gaurav Gautam mentioned.
The twentieth Asian Games started in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, on Saturday and can proceed until October 4. Athletes from throughout Asia are competing in a number of sporting disciplines on the continental occasion.
Haryana has been one in all India’s key contributors in a number of sports activities, significantly in disciplines akin to wrestling, boxing, athletics and capturing.
Meanwhile, Kabaddi star Pawan Sehrawat and Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker led the Indian contingent on the opening ceremony of the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya on Saturday.
The ceremony on the Paloma Mizuho Stadium marked the formal opening of the twentieth Asian Games, with India represented by a 503-athlete contingent throughout 36 sports activities. Sehrawat, a member of India’s gold-medal-winning males’s kabaddi crew on the earlier Asian Games, now has the excellence of carrying the Tricolour on the opening ceremony alongside Bhaker. Bhaker, a double Olympic medallist, is amongst India’s distinguished athletes on the Games.Â
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.
In a video message forward of the ceremony, Bhaker mentioned that realising that she was chosen as one of many flag-bearers left her with a ‘heartwarming’ feeling, and all she might expertise was flashbacks of her early days within the sport and reflections on how far she has come.
‘Honestly, once I discovered yesterday, I had all these flashback recollections of my earlier days. And, , once I began, I by no means thought that this was the place I might attain someday in my sport. So, it’s positively a really heartwarming feeling. I really feel actually proud, actually honoured, and actually, actually glad to be chosen because the flag bearer for my nation. I simply need to say thanks to God and thanks to everybody for all of the love and assist,’ she mentioned.
India will likely be aiming to outdo the 2022 version, the place they secured a record-breaking 107 medals, together with 28 gold, 38 silver and 41 bronze. Â (ANI)