Four women — Kiran Pahal, MR Poovamma, Prachi Choudhary and Vithya Ramraj — from different parts of the country brought India its first and only track-and-field gold medal of the 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya, Japan. They produced an exceptional run to claim the title on the concluding day of the athletics competition at the Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium.
The win matters for more than the medal count, though the count helps. India finished with 24 athletics medals: one gold, nine silver and 14 bronze. The relay also restored a title India had lost at Hangzhou in 2023, when Bahrain beat the defending champions to gold.
The gold changed the narrative around India’s athletics campaign at Nagoya. Without it, the contingent would have gone home with a pile of silver and bronze and a lot of near-misses. Instead, India left Nagoya with a gold that kept a 44-year athletics tradition alive.
That is why India’s women’s 4x400m relay gold is ThePrint Newsmaker of the Week.
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Streak is alive
For a week, India’s athletes had come close in the Asian Games, only to fumble at the finish line. Medals kept slipping away, and the prospect of ending the Asian Games without a gold in athletics for the first time in 32 years was dawning upon the country.
Then Pahal, Poovamma, Choudhary and Ramraj walked onto the track at Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium in Nagoya.
Pahal ran the opening leg. Despite a slightly slower start, she managed the high pressure of the opening lap well and executed a steady pass, handing over in third position. Poovamma, the senior-most in the group, drew on all her experience to judge her pace, then pulled India into contention and stayed half a step behind Qatar when Choudhary took the baton. She held India in the top two before passing the anchor.
Everything the trio had built now rested on Ramraj’s shoulders. Just 24 hours earlier, she had broken PT Usha’s 42-year-old national record in the 400m hurdles. When she was just steps behind China’s Zuo Siyu, everyone watching in India was on the edge of their seats.
Ramraj passed Siyu in the final 200m, then surged clear to cross the line first in 3:29.69. Bahrain, whose team included Olympic medallist Salwa Eid Naser, took silver in 3:30.21, and China won bronze in 3:31.02.
“I was a bit confused around the 300m mark. Do I overtake her now, or do I wait and keep chasing her? Then I said, ‘Let’s just go,’ and pushed myself,” said Ramraj. “They have trusted me as the anchor runner. I had to live up to it, right? Also, my teammates had done such a good job. I wanted to finish well for them.”
The gold completed a remarkable run for the four women. Ramraj now has three medals from these Games: this gold, a silver in the mixed 4x400m relay and a bronze in the individual 400m hurdles. Choudhary had already won individual bronze in the 400m. For Poovamma, the gold was a fitting end to her third Asian Games. It joins two golds, two silvers and a bronze from earlier editions, making this her sixth Asian Games medal.
The win keeps one of Indian athletics’ most reliable streaks alive. India’s women have now medalled in the Asian Games 4x400m relay at every edition since 1982, and this is India’s seventh gold medal in the event.
However, the men’s 4x400m relay team couldn’t match the women. Dharamveer Choudhary, Manu TS, Jay Kumar and Vishal TK clocked 3:01.61 and finished third behind Japan and Qatar, failing to defend the gold India had won at the previous edition.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)