So, after Asian athletics championships and world championships, we can now look at probability of medals in Asian games.
We had 8 golds and total 20 medals in last Asian games in 2018. Will we be able to replicate or improve on 8 golds of last time ?
Out of the 8 golds won last time, 4 are most likely to be repeated - Neeraj (Javelin), Tejinder Toor (Shot put), Ajay Kumar ( 1500M) and mixed 4 x 400M relay. Other 4 were in
Mens 800M- Krishan Kumar won silver at Asian athletics, he will have to press hard for gold
Mens triple jump- Chinese Yaming Zhu jumped 17.15M in Budapest were our triple jumpers flopped, so that is not likely to be repeated.
Womens 4 x 400M relay- Our women finished poor third in Asian championships but later clocked the best time of the year in Asia. So, there is good hope there to repeat that gold.
Womens Hepathlon - last time gold medalist Swapna Burman won silver at Asian championships behind an Uzbek who was quite a bit ahead. So, looks tough to repeat gold there although medal should be there.
So, probably we can get 1 or at most 2 from these 4 events which make it 5-6 golds. Will have to get at least 2-3 from other events to reach 8 gold level.
Jyothi Yarraji has best Asian time this year in womens 100M hurdles and also won gold at Asian championships. So, she is the favorite. She will be also be at 200M where she got silver at Asian championships and Sigapore girl who won gold is far ahead.
Mens 4x 400M relay team if they repeat the heroics of WC will land gold.
Mens 3000M steeplchase will be between Sable and Japanese Ryuji Mura who between then have top 10 times of the years.
Mens Long jump- Sreeshankar and Aldrin will compete with Chinese Jiannan Wang with Chinese being favorite at home.
Chance for Shaili in womens long jump - she won silver at Asian championships.
Outside chance in Womens 800M/1500M- Chanda, Deeksha and Harmilan Bains , Parul Chaudhary in womens 3000M steeplchase,
So, maybe will get 3 from this lot.
We may just repeat 8 golds of last time, overall medals I think should go up from 20 of last time by 5 or so.
So, my prediction here went slightly off the mark, we ended up with 6 instead of 8 golds but total medals I had predicted 25, turned out to be 29.
We medalled in almost all the events where we had even slight bit of expectation.
There are still quite a few medals where we do not pose much of a challenge even at Asian level- like sprints, Hammer throw, discuss throw ( earlier we had good throwers here), Pole Vault, High jump ( we are close to medal level here though). By next Asian games if we can get some competitiveness in these events too the tally will swell further.
We are pretty good now in middle and long distance running and javelin throw/shot put, Long jump/ triple jump and longer relays. Need to further improve to get golds in most of these instead of silvers and bronzes.
