Asian Para Games: How India has fared over the years?

When the 2026 Asian Para Games open in Aichi-Nagoya on October 18, India will arrive as one of the continent’s genuine heavyweights. But, it was not always so.

In 2010 during its inaugural edition, the country’s para-athletes were largely invisible, and the journey from there to the top five is one of the quieter triumphs of Indian sport.

A modest beginning in Guangzhou 2010

The first Asian Para Games, held in Guangzhou in 2010 straight after the Asian Games, drew little attention back home.

India won 14 medals, only one of them gold, and finished 15th in the medal tally.

That gold came from Jagseer Singh in the men’s F46 triple jump. The result looked small then, but it was the start of a pattern with athletics being India’s backbone at every edition since.

Slow, steady growth in Incheon 2014

Four years later in Incheon, India sent a team of 87 and returned with 33 medals, including three gold, 14 silver, 16 bronze.

The medal count more than doubled, but the ranking stayed at 15th. India was winning more, yet it was still a long way from the leading group.

The contingent was also narrow. Athletics, badminton, archery, judo, swimming and shooting made up the team, and the athletes who competed were often self-funded or supported by families and small foundations. Institutional backing was thin.

The Jakarta 2018 breakthrough

Jakarta in 2018 was where the arc turned. India sent its then-largest contingent, 190 athletes across 13 sports, and came home with 72 medals, including 15 gold, 24 silver and 33 bronze. That lifted India to a ninth place finish in the medal tally.

Para athletics delivered the bulk of the medals, while chess, powerlifting, badminton and shooting added depth.

Jakarta also showed how much the system was changing. Visibility improved after the Rio 2016 Paralympics, where Mariyappan Thangavelu and Devendra Jhajharia had already shown what Indian para-athletes could do on the biggest stage.

By 2018, Mariyappan was carrying the flag for India at the Asian Para Games.

Hangzhou 2022, India surpass three digits

The pandemic pushed the fourth edition, originally scheduled for 2022, to October 2023. It turned out to be worth the wait.

India sent 303 athletes, its largest team ever, and finished with 111 medals, including 29 gold, 31 silver and 51 bronze. It put India fifth in the medal table, behind only China, Iran, Japan and Korea.

The haul broke the previous record of 72 medals and crossed the 100-medal mark at an Asian Para Games for the first time. Remarkably, it was four more than India’s able-bodied contingent won at the Hangzhou Asian Games a few weeks earlier.

India’s para-athletes also competed for the first time in boccia, blind football, lawn bowls, taekwondo, rowing and canoe, showing how far the programme had widened.

Individual stories made the numbers memorable. Archer Sheetal Devi, born without arms, became one of the faces of the Games, and athletes like Sumit Antil reinforced India’s strength in the throws.

Women contributed around 40 of the 111 medals, roughly 36% of the haul, a sign that the movement was broadening.

India at the Asian Para Games: The record

What to expect in Nagoya

The expectations this time are very different from 2010. The target is no longer simply to appear on the table, but to defend a top-five finish against Japan, Iran and Korea, all strong and with home advantage in Japan’s case.

Athletics will again carry the weight, but badminton, archery, and shooting should be strong sources of medals, and the newer sports will test how deep the pipeline really is.

Matching 111 medals will be demanding, because Hangzhou was the product of a long-delayed cycle and a record-sized squad. But a strong showing in Nagoya would confirm that 2023 was a foundation rather than a peak.

Sixteen years ago, India won one gold in Guangzhou. Today, its para-athletes arrive as medal contenders in almost every discipline they enter.

It is a journey worth remembering as the flame is lit on October 18.