PM Modi praises Indian athletes as Team India indicators off Asian Games with 85 medals

New Delhi [India], October 4 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday congratulated the Indian contingent and medal winners on the Asian Games 2026, praising their dedication, ardour and sporting spirit. 

He mentioned their performances ought to encourage better achievements and assist strengthen sports activities on the grassroots stage. 

India signed off from the Asian Games 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya with a haul of 85 medals, however it was the nation’s clear sweep of gold medals in cricket, kabaddi and hockey that offered the defining moments of a marketing campaign which additionally produced record-breaking performances, first-time podium finishes and historic particular person triumphs.

‘As the Asian Games 2026 draw to a detailed, my compliments to each member of the Indian contingent for representing our nation with dedication, ardour and noteworthy sporting spirit. Congratulations to all our medal winners, whose performances have introduced immense pleasure to the nation.  May these Games encourage even better achievements within the years forward. May they contribute to strengthening sports activities on the grassroots too,’ PM Modi wrote in an X publish. 

https://x.com/narendramodi/status/2106762224039837734?s=20

India completed fourth within the general medal standings with 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze medals. China dominated the Games with 341 medals, together with 169 gold, whereas hosts Japan completed second with 269 medals, together with 83 gold. South Korea had been third with 150 medals, together with 39 gold, in line with Olympics.com.

India’s 85-medal haul was under the report 106 medals, together with 28 gold, received on the Hangzhou Games in 2023, however the marketing campaign featured a number of landmark achievements throughout disciplines.

The greatest success got here within the three crew sports activities the place India entered each males’s and ladies’s competitions — cricket, kabaddi and hockey — and returned with gold medals in all six occasions.

In cricket, India accomplished a golden double after the ladies’s crew received the title earlier than the lads’s facet defeated arch-rivals Pakistan by 19 runs within the ultimate.

The males’s crew, powered by contributions from Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma and Axar Patel, added the gold to the ladies’s crew’s emphatic 147-run victory over Sri Lanka within the ladies’s ultimate.

Kabaddi produced one other clear sweep. India’s ladies defeated Iran 37-34 in a intently fought ultimate to efficiently defend their title, whereas the lads’s crew got here from behind to beat Iran 40-34.

The males’s gold was India’s ninth in 10 editions since kabaddi grew to become a males’s crew sport on the Asian Games in 1990. The solely exception got here in 2018, when India received bronze. The ladies’s crew, in the meantime, continued its dominance for the reason that sport’s introduction to the ladies’s programme in 2010.

Hockey accomplished India’s clear sweep within the crew sports activities. The ladies’s crew ended a 44-year await an Asian Games medal by defeating China 1-0 within the ultimate, with Lalremsiami scoring the decisive objective within the tenth minute.

The victory was India’s first ladies’s hockey gold on the Asian Games since 1982.

The males’s crew adopted with a 5-1 win over Malaysia within the ultimate, efficiently defending its Asian Games title. It was India’s fifth males’s hockey gold after victories in 1966, 1998, 2014 and 2022, and the primary time the Indian males’s and ladies’s hockey groups received gold on the similar version.

With these wins, India’s males’s and ladies’s hockey groups certified for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, reserving their seats efficiently. (ANI)