The Indian track and field contingent at Asian Games 2023

(From left) Parul Chaudhary, Neeraj Chopra and Tajinderpal Singh Toor. India’s largest representation in a single sport will be in athletics, with a total of 68 athletes in track and field events- 35 men and 33 women.

The 2023 Asian Games — 2022, officially — is already under way, and the preliminary rounds of cricket, golf, modern pentathlon, rowing, and volleyball (both indoor and beach) have already been played.

However, the main phase will take place only after the opening ceremony. Athletics — both and track and field — will begin six days after that, on September 29.

Of Indian athletes, the most obvious medal contender is Neeraj Chopra. If you had grown up in the 1980s, an Olympic medal in athletics was unthinkable in a nation that used to take pride in Milkha Singh and PT Usha’s near-misses.

Even if Chopra had done nothing else after his Olympic gold medal, the first for India in an individual sport, the nation would still have celebrated him. But he did not stop there. This year, he did another first: he won India’s first gold at the World Athletics Championships, in Budapest.

Indeed, Chopra has taken Indian expectations to unprecedented level — to an extent that if he does not win gold at Hangzhou, it will be considered an upset.

Yet, he is not India’s only medal contender in the event. Kishore Jena won silver at the national championships this year and finished fifth at Budapest. One cannot rule out the possibility of two Indian javelin throwers on the podium.

But that is just the men. Annu Rani has improved on her own national record multiple times; won bronze at the Incheon Asiad in 2014; and at Birmingham 2022, became the first Indian female javelin thrower to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games. Three javelin throw medals is perhaps not too unrealistic a dream.

Another serious medal contender is Tajinderpal Singh Toor, defending gold medallist from Jakarta-Palembang 2018. Toor is a rarity in India – for he had switched to shot put from cricket. With two gold medals this year, at Asiana (Asian Indoor Championships) and Bangkok (Asian Championships), Toor is in outstanding form.

Also participating in shot put will be Manpreet Kaur, the only female Indian to qualify for a field event at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Banned after she failed a dope test, Kaur will be back to prove a point. Having won gold in 2014 and bronze in 2018, discus thrower Seema Punia will want to do a hat-trick of medals this time.

Of the jumpers, the biggest contenders are Murali Sreeshankar and Jeswin Aldrin. Sreeshankar won a long jump silver at Birmingham 2022, but hot on his heels is Aldrin. This year, Aldrin jumped 8.42 metres to eclipse Sreeshankar’s national record.

There is also Shaili Singh, protégé of Anju Bobby George, fresh from a silver at the Asian Athletic Championships.

Triple jumper Abdulla Aboobacker won silver at Birmingham in 2022 (his teammate Praveen Chithravel finished fourth), and gold at Bangkok this year. Eyes will also be on Sheena Varkey.

Among high jumpers, the biggest contenders are Rubina Yadav, who clocked 1.81 metres at Bengaluru this year; Pooja, who broke Yadav’s junior national record; and Sarvesh Kushare, this year’s national champion.

In 2022, Jyothi Yarraji became the first Indian female hurdler to run 100m under 13 seconds. In 2023, she broke the 60m hurdles record five times in 19 days. Apart from hurdles, she will also compete in 200-metre sprint.

As recently as on 11 September 2023, Vithya Ramraj came within 0.01 seconds of PT Usha’s national record of 55.42 seconds for 400-metre hurdles. She will be there as well, raring for gold.

At this year’s Asian Athletics Championships, Parul Chaudhary won gold at 3,000-metre steeplechase and silver at 5000-metre. The national record holder in both events, she will run for gold at both in Hangzhou.

So will Avinash Sable, who broke the national record for the ninth time at the 3,000-metre steeplechase when he won silver at last year’s Commonwealth Games. It was no ordinary feat: Sable became the first non-Kenyan since 1994 to win a medal at the event.

The delightfully named Jinson Johnson had won the 1,500-metre gold and the 800-metre silver at the Jakarta-Palembang Asiad. He will run in only the former this time, along with 2023 Asian Athletics Championship gold medallist Ajay Kumar Saroj.

Remember how Muhammed Anas Yahiya, Amoj Jacob, Muhammad Ajmal Variyathodi, and Rajesh Ramesh became overnight sensations by setting a new Asian record for 4x400-metre relay at Budapest last month and finishing fifth? They will be favourites at the Asian Games.

Last year, Tejaswin Shankar had won a lawsuit against the Athletics Federation of India to become part of the Commonwealth Games contingent. There, he won India’s first ever high jump medal — bronze — at the Games. This year, he won a decathlon bronze at the Asian Athletics Championships. At Hangzhou, he will participate in the latter.

Rounding off the list of contenders is the remarkable Swapna Barman, who converted her fifth-place finish at Incheon 2014 to a gold medal at Jakarta-Palembang 2018 and was honoured with the Arjuna Awards in 2019.

After winning gold at both high jump and heptathlon at last year’s national games, she admitted to being surprised (“I did not complete my recovery as well as I wanted to”). Hers is an incredible story, for she could not afford a trainer or a physiotherapist and had to recover on her own.

This time, Barman will compete for one final time in her quest for a podium finish in heptathlon.