Asian Games: Vithya & Co end India’s wait for first gold in track & field

The final day of track & field competition at the Asian Games 2026 saw India end their search for the elusive gold as the foursome of  Vithya Ramraj, Kiran Pahal, Machettira Poovamma and Prachi stormed to a gold in 4 x 400m women’s relay at Aichi Nagoya.

The men’s 4 x 400m relay team also rose to the occasion with a bronze while the Indian quartet also had a podium finish with bronze in mixed 4 x 100m relay. However, the evening certainly belonged to Vithya & Co when they clocked 3:29.69 to finish ahead of Bahrain, who claimed silver in 3:30.21 while China took bronze in 3:31.02.

Kiran opened the race and handed over in third. Poovamma, the senior-most member of the squad, then produced a strong second leg to move India into the lead before Prachi kept the team ahead. Ramraj took the baton for the anchor leg and held off Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Nasr in the closing stages to seal gold for India.

Despite bringing in the silver and bronze at regular intervals, India were in danger of finishing a Games campaign without an athletics gold for the first time since the 1994 Hiroshima Games. The gold capped a memorable campaign for Vithya, who claimed her third medal of the Games—the earlier ones being a silver in the mixed 4x400m relay and bronze in the women’s 400m hurdles.

Her bronze in the 400m hurdles was particularly significant with her 54.75 seconds eclipsing PT Usha’s national record of 55.42 seconds which had stood for 42 years. She then added another silver as part of the mixed 4x400m relay team before finishing her campaign with gold.

India’s athletics campaign on Tuesday had already produced two medals before the women’s 4x400m relay took centre stage. Pooja won bronze in the women’s high jump, while Gulveer Singh added bronze in the men’s 5000m with a time of 13:32.75. Gulveer hence completed a hat-trick of medals after earlier winning silver in the 10,000m and 1500m. India also secured bronze in the mixed 4x100m relay.

India signed off in style with another bronze in the men’s 4x400m relay. Dharmveer Choudhary, Manu Thekkinalil, Jay Kumar and Vishal Thennarasu clocked 3:01.61, finishing behind Japan (3:00.75) and Qatar (3:00.93) in a thrilling final.

There were disappointments as well with Avinash Sable not starting the men’s 5000m final after missing the podium in the 3000m steeplechase. In the women’s hammer throw, Tanya Chaudhary finished fourth with a personal best of 63.35m while Anushka Yadav was fifth with 64.56m.