Roshibina Eyes Gold as Rowers, Shooters, and Track Stars Headline Action

Having captured medals on every consecutive day of the competition so far, the Indian contingent enters Day 5 of the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, with multiple podium opportunities lined up across combat, precision, aquatic, and track sports. The marquee showdown of Thursday morning features martial arts star Naorem Roshibina Devi stepping into the ring for the women's sanda 60kg gold-medal bout against China's Xiaoyu Zhang, while watercourses and shooting ranges present prime opportunities to expand India's overall medal count. Concurrently, a packed track-and-field roster gets underway alongside high-stakes team encounters in hockey, squash, boxing, and kabaddi.

The day's medal quests begin early at 6:10 AM with Roshibina Devi's historic wushu sanda gold clash, followed immediately by shooting precision battles where Akash Bhardwaj, Kamaljeet, and Kedarling Balkrishna Uchaganve contest the men's 10m air pistol individual qualification and team final at 6:15 AM (with individual finals scheduled for 12:15 PM). At 6:30 AM, skeet pair Parinaaz Dhaliwal and Anantjeet Singh Naruka take aim in the mixed team qualification and final rounds. Over at the regatta course, three consecutive rowing finals will determine medal outcomes: the women's fours final featuring Gurbani Kaur, Alina Anto, Tendenthoi Haobijam, and Poonam at 7:10 AM; Ujjwal Kumar Singh and Rohit in the lightweight men's double sculls final at 12:00 PM; and the men's quadruple sculls quartet of Arvind Singh, Kulwinder Singh, Navdeep Singh, and Zakar Khan racing at 1:00 PM. On the track, heptathletes Anamika Anish and Pooja open heats at 6:30 AM, followed by the mixed 4x400m relay heats at 7:01 AM, Asha Elango and Niharika Vashisht in the women's triple jump final at 4:14 PM, Gurindervir Singh and Animesh Kujur in the men's 100m heats at 4:38 PM, and Seema contesting the women's 10,000m final at 5:55 PM.

In the boxing ring, men's 70kg contender Sumit takes on Iraq's Al-Sarai Ali Qassim at 10:30 AM, before Sakshi squares off against Kazakhstan's Alua Balkibekova in the women's 65kg round of 16 at 2:15 PM, directly followed by Parveen trading leather with Tajikistan's Malika Nozimova at 2:45 PM. Team sports feature an electrifying men's Pool A hockey showdown as India faces regional powerhouse South Korea at 11:30 AM, alongside double kabaddi fixtures seeing the men take on Chinese Taipei at 9:45 AM and the women battle Japan at 4:15 PM. Squash courts will host an all-Indian mixed doubles battle between Suraj Chand-Shamina Riaz and Joshna Chinappa-Velavan Senthilkumar at 8:00 AM, women's singles clashes with Tanvi Khanna and Anahat Singh at 10:30 AM, and men's singles fixtures featuring Abhay Singh and Veer Chotrani at 11:15 AM. Table tennis action rounds out the schedule with women's doubles matches featuring Diya Chitale-Yashaswini Ghorpade at 6:30 AM, Sreeja Akula-Cinderella Das at 7:10 AM, and Manush Shah opening men's singles at 8:35 AM.