India's Women Beat South Korea's Archers for the First Time in Asian Games History

India’s women had never even reached an Asian Games final in recurve archery. On October 2 in Nagoya, they won one outright, beating ten-time Olympic champions South Korea 5-3 for the country’s first-ever gold in the event.

Three archers, one first

Ankita Bhakat, Kirti Sharma and Kumkum Mohod held their nerve through windy conditions against a South Korean side that included Kang Chaeyoung, a Tokyo Olympics gold medalist. The Indian trio sealed the title in the fourth set. South Korea’s women’s recurve team has dominated the Olympics and Asian Games for decades, which is exactly what made this one count. India had simply never been good enough, as a team, to reach this final before.

Bhakat only made the squad by beating four-time Olympian Deepika Kumari in a shoot-off for the third and final spot. Sharma and Kumkum Mohod are teenagers who forced their way into the recurve rankings this year, and the pair had already given a hint of what was coming: at an Archery World Cup stage in Shanghai earlier this year, they teamed up to upset China for gold. Beating China was the warm-up. Beating South Korea, at an Asian Games, in a final India had never reached, was the actual target.

A second boxing gold for the record books

Lovlina Borgohain added to the week’s medal count with gold in the women’s 75kg boxing final, beating China’s Bao Ziyi 5-0 at Nishio Gymnasium, on her 29th birthday. She reached the final by edging past Kazakhstan’s reigning world champion Natalya Bogdanova in a tight 3-2 split-decision semifinal, after a clean 5-0 win over South Korea’s Seong Suyeon in the quarters.

The win makes Borgohain only the second Indian woman to win an Asian Games boxing gold, twelve years after Mary Kom first did it in 2014. Boxing gold at this level doesn’t come from one good day. It comes from beating a reigning world champion on the way to the final and then not easing off against the actual final.

Borgohain had been explicit about wanting exactly this result. After settling for silver at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year, she said plainly that she wanted to “change the colour of my medal” the next time out. The next time out was Nagoya, and she did.

Both hockey teams, both golds, both tickets to Los Angeles

India’s women ended a wait that had lasted since 1982. They beat China 1-0 in the final on October 2, with Lalremsiami scoring the only goal and goalkeeper Savita Punia saving a penalty stroke to protect the lead. Forty-four years is long enough that most of the players on this squad were born well after India’s last Asian Games hockey gold. Punia, nicknamed the Great Wall of India and a Padma Shri recipient, has won the FIH’s Goalkeeper of the Year award three years running. The save that protected this final was the kind of moment that award is given for. The win also secures India’s women a direct berth at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

A day later, the men defended their own title, beating Malaysia 5-1 with captain Harmanpreet Singh scoring twice. It’s India’s fifth Asian Games hockey gold and the first time the team has successfully defended the title. Manpreet Singh, part of the winning squad, becomes the first Indian hockey player to win three Asian Games golds.

The men’s win carries its own bit of redemption. India arrived in Aichi-Nagoya as defending champions but coming off an eighth-place finish at this year’s Hockey World Cup, a result well below what a team with this much talent is supposed to produce. Beating Malaysia by four goals to retain the Asian Games title, with the Olympic berth attached, is the kind of answer that a bad World Cup doesn’t get to define a team. Like the women’s team, the men’s win comes with a direct qualification spot for Los Angeles 2028, meaning India now has both its hockey teams into the next Olympics before most other sports have even finished qualifying.