Abhinav Bindra After Asian Games: "Los Angeles Less Than Two Years Away"

Olympic champion shooter Abhinav Bindra on Sunday congratulated Indian athletes for their Asian Games campaign but called for greater urgency in strengthening the country's high-performance ecosystem with the Los Angeles Olympics less than two years away. India finished at the fourth place on the medal table with 85 medals, including 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze. "Congratulations to every Indian athlete and to Team India on the Asian Games. A Games campaign is never just the few days we see on television. It is years of early mornings, injuries, doubts, missed occasions and countless hours of work.

"So first and foremost, enormous respect to our athletes and also to their families who live this journey with them and make sacrifices that are rarely seen. To the coaches, support staff, federations, SAI, the Government and everyone working behind the scenes, THANK YOU !," Bindra wrote on 'X'.

"There have been some terrific breakthrough performances at these Games. Young athletes have announced themselves, others have stepped up to a new level and there have been moments that give us a lot to be excited about."

Congratulations to every Indian athlete and to Team India on the Asian Games. A Games campaign is never just the few days we see on television. It is years of early mornings, injuries, doubts, missed occasions and countless hours of work. So first and foremost, enormous respect to our athletes and also to their families who live this journey with them and make sacrifices that are rarely seen. To the coaches, support staff, federations, SAI, the Government and everyone working behind the scenes, THANK YOU ! There have been some terrific breakthrough performances at these Games. Young athletes have announced themselves, others have stepped up to a new level and there have been moments that give us a lot to be excited about. There have also been disappointments. That is sport and every Games will have them. What matters now is how honestly we learn from them. High performance cannot only be about reacting when an athlete is close to a medal. We have to keep building systems that understand the athlete over several years. Systems that spot gaps early, use science and data intelligently, get coaching and competition planning right, manage training load and recovery, reduce preventable injuries and build athletes who are physically and mentally resilient when the pressure is greatest. Most importantly, the right expertise has to reach the athlete at the right stage of their career, not when it is already too late. LA is less than two years away. In Olympic sport that is not a long time. The athletes who will stand on the podium there are already deep into their preparation today. So this is the moment to celebrate what went well, be honest about what did not and get back to work with urgency and purpose. Congratulations again to our athletes and to everyone who stood behind them. Be proud of what has been achieved. Learn from these Games and keep moving forward. Wishing Team India everything good on the road to LA.

— Abhinav A. Bindra OLY (@Abhinav_Bindra) October 4, 2026

India's medal tally was 21 medals and seven golds fewer than the 106-medal haul, achieved in the last edition at Hangzhou, China.

China topped the table for the 12th consecutive edition, finishing with 169 gold, 89 silver and 83 bronze for a total of 341 medals, its best haul at an overseas Asian Games. Host Japan ended second with 269 medals (83 gold, 95 silver and 91 bronze), followed by South Korea with 39 gold, 43 silver and 68 bronze.

"There have also been disappointments. That is sport and every Games will have them. What matters now is how honestly we learn from them. High performance cannot only be about reacting when an athlete is close to a medal. We have to keep building systems that understand the athlete over several years," he said.

"Systems that spot gaps early, use science and data intelligently, get coaching and competition planning right, manage training load and recovery, reduce preventable injuries and build athletes who are physically and mentally resilient when the pressure is greatest. Most importantly, the right expertise has to reach the athlete at the right stage of their career, not when it is already too late."

Looking ahead to the Los Angeles Olympics, Bindra said the next phase of preparation needs to begin with urgency.

"LA is less than two years away. In Olympic sport that is not a long time. The athletes who will stand on the podium there are already deep into their preparation today. So this is the moment to celebrate what went well, be honest about what did not and get back to work with urgency and purpose.

"Congratulations again to our athletes and to everyone who stood behind them. Be proud of what has been achieved. Learn from these Games and keep moving forward. Wishing Team India everything good on the road to LA."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Congress Falls Back On A Fullback: Where Pargat Singh Fits In Punjab Poll Play

Perth, 1985. India were trailing West Germany 1-5 at hockey's Champions Trophy with about eight minutes left when a 20-year-old fullback picked up the ball near the halfway line, ran at the defence, skipped past four defenders, and lifted it over the goalkeeper. It sparked a comeback still counted among Indian hockey's greatest. India scored four times in that spell to draw 5-5.

Forty-one years later, the Congress has handed him the ball in Punjab with lots to defend against, and everything to play for.

"It all happened so fast. Maybe the Germans did not expect it from me," Pargat Singh recalled about that match in Australia in a 1991 interview.

On Friday, the party named the former Olympic captain its state unit chief, two days after Amarinder Singh Raja Warring resigned and months before the 2027 Assembly elections.

Picking Pargat was a fallback, though not purely defensive. Former minister Vijay Inder Singla, a Hindu from the Bania (trader) community who heads the party's election management committee, was reportedly the frontrunner in two rounds of deliberation. Instead, the high command replaced one Jat Sikh with another, keeping the community equation intact and bringing a measured, issue-driven skipper to the top.

Lokniti-CSDS survey data from the last few elections shows why the Congress is worried about the numbers. The same data, read against Punjab's history, shows that arithmetic rarely decides the final score, least of all in a contest that's five-cornered this time.

READ | Hockey Legend Pargat Singh Named Punjab Congress Chief After Raja Warring Quits

Pargat Singh, 61, is seen as a measured speaker, unlike the more irreverent Raja Warring whom he replaces.
Photo: FB/@pargatsofficial

Holding The Line

Sikhs make up around 58 per cent of Punjab's population, and every chief minister since the state's reorganisation in 1966 has been a Sikh. Most have been Jat Sikhs, a largely rural, landowning community estimated at 22 per cent of the population. The incumbent, Aam Aadmi Party's Bhagwant Mann, is one.

Not all, though. Giani Zail Singh in the 1970s came from a Ramgarhia Sikh background, of traditional artisans, and Charanjit Singh Channi, who served briefly before the Congress lost in 2022, is a Dalit Sikh.

The Jat Sikh vote is where the Congress is weakest. Only 16 per cent of Jat Sikhs voted for it in 2022, down from 29 per cent in 2017, according to the Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey. AAP took 46 per cent.

The state chief of every major party is a Jat Sikh this time, except AAP, which has a Hindu state unit chief and a Jat Sikh chief minister. Sections of the Congress are learnt to have argued that dropping the community from the top would have left it the odd one out. The poll field still carries Sikh issues, such as the alleged inaction by the then SAD-BJP government over sacrilege incidents in the mid-2010s.

Flank That Remains Open

The party has to, however, tackle how to give representation to Hindus, about 39 per cent of the population and the majority in most towns and cities. They have been a Congress stronghold in the not-so-distant past.

Pargat Singh started his innings by visiting prominent religious places of both Hindus and Sikhs in Delhi, where he was at the time of his appointment.

Among upper-caste Hindus, the Congress got 49 per cent of the votes in 2017, which halved by 2022, while the BJP's share tripled to reach 20 per cent, Lokniti-CSDS data showed. AAP was the main gainer across Hindu groups in 2022. Still, the Congress held on to more of its Hindu vote than its Sikh vote.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Hindutva-focused BJP, contesting without the traditionally Sikh party Shiromani Akali Dal, took 18.56 per cent of the vote, its highest ever.

The Congress has had Hindu faces at the top before. Sunil Jakhar, state chief from 2017 to 2021, was even in the reckoning for chief minister when the party replaced Captain Amarinder Singh in 2021, before it made Channi the state's first Dalit chief minister. Jakhar later said advisers in Delhi had made his candidacy a Hindu-Sikh issue, and he quit the party in 2022 and went on to lead the BJP's state unit. The BJP recently replaced him with Kewal Singh Dhillon, its first Jat Sikh state president.

AAP has paired a Jat Sikh, Bhagwant Mann, with Aman Arora, a Hindu, as its state unit chief. The Congress has yet to find that balance.

Voters, however, may be more open than the parties. In the 2022 Lokniti-CSDS survey, 73.7 per cent of respondents said Punjab's chief minister can also be a non-Sikh.

Who's The Playmaker?

Dalits, from both Sikh and Hindu Scheduled Castes, make up about a third of Punjab's population, the highest such share in any state; 34 of the 117 Assembly seats are reserved for them. But making Channi chief minister in 2021, months before the polls, did not bring the Congress their votes. The party's share among Dalit Sikhs fell from 42 per cent in 2017 to 27 per cent in 2022, while AAP's rose from 21 to 46 per cent, Lokniti-CSDS found.

AAP won 28 of the 34 reserved seats, and Channi lost both seats he contested.

Channi, now the Jalandhar MP, remains the party's most prominent face, and his camp led the push to remove Warring. "Channi saheb has won," Warring said after his removal.

Channi served briefly as CM, the first Dalit to hold the post in Punjab, before the 2022 debacle of the Congress. Photo: IANS

READ | 'Charanjit Channi Saheb Has Won': Raja Warring Meets Rahul Gandhi After Exit As Punjab Congress Chief

Formally, the party has no chief ministerial face, but Channi is its campaign committee chief. The Congress has had a tradition of the campaign committee chief becoming chief minister in several states. "When we get the majority, the high command will decide," Leader of the Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa, another Jat Sikh contender, has said. Tradition dictates that the high command in Delhi decides.

As it stands today, the Congress has a Dalit Sikh as the de facto face and a Jat Sikh running the organisation, covering the state's two largest Sikh groups.

Geography adds another layer. Malwa, with 69 of the 117 seats, has traditionally decided who governs Punjab. The AAP won 66 of those seats in 2022. With Warring gone, none of the Congress's three most prominent leaders is from Malwa. Pargat and Channi are Jalandhar-based in Doaba, and Bajwa represents Qadian in Majha.

Does A Formula Work?

"Caste and community in Punjab is a current, not a container," historian and political commentator Harjeshwar Pal Singh said, however.

"Leaders win by riding moods, not by filling quotas," he opined.

AAP's 2022 victory cut across groups, described as "a bouquet of support from all castes and communities". In the Lokniti survey, 46 per cent said a candidate's caste mattered "not at all" to their vote.

Clear, rooted, and firm leadership is what matters, according to Harjeshwar. "In a multi-cornered fight, anti-incumbency does not automatically land in the challenger's lap; it has to be harvested, and that needs a sickle in one firm hand," he said.

In 2022, AAP declared Bhagwant Mann its CM face and won by a landslide. The Congress won in 2017 with Captain Amarinder Singh firmly in the saddle; it removed him before the 2022 elections and ended up presenting a fragmented leadership to voters.

In 2024, the vote splintered as the Congress and AAP were level at about 26 per cent, the BJP rose to 18.56, and two independents who campaigned on hardline Sikh platforms, including a jailed Amritpal Singh, won seats.

The 2027 field remains fragmented; it includes the AAP, Congress, SAD, BJP, and Amritpal's Akali Dal (Waris Punjab De). A SAD-BJP alliance remains under discussion. Calculating vote banks too minutely, thus, may end up confusing not just the voters but the leaders themselves.

For the Congress, presenting a united face remains the challenge. Pargat was a part of the Channi camp, though his public statements kept up with his calm but firm demeanour. He is known to write formal letters on specific issues to governments, and gives interviews focused on the public and not on factionalism.

READ | From Badals To Captain: How Pargat Singh's Dissent May Have Scored It For Him

Pargat's Long Game

The hockey champ's political journey has been winding yet moving forward, like that historic goal run in Perth. He served in the Punjab Police before entering politics to win the Jalandhar Cantonment seat for the SAD in 2012. Suspended by that party in 2016 after questioning some of its actions, he joined cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu to form a group that weighed AAP versus Congress. They moved to the Congress, which won. Pargat stayed in Sidhu's corner through the Amarinder years, became a party general secretary when Sidhu rebelled and took over the state unit in 2021. Pargat served in Channi's cabinet.

In the 2022 AAP sweep, Pargat was one of only 18 Congress candidates to win. Sidhu, the six-hitting opening batter, has since drifted away. The long-run defender has stayed.

"Hockey has changed now... Everyone must learn to play in every position, to attack, defend, everything," Pargat Singh said in an interview three decades ago. That's the job he has now.

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OnePlus 15 vs iQOO 15: Which Phone Should You Consider This Festive Season?

OnePlus 15 and iQOO 15 will be available at discounted prices during the upcoming Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale 2026. If you are confused about which flagship smartphone you should buy during the upcoming Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale 2026, we have compared the prices and specifications of the OnePlus 15 and iQOO 15 to help you make an informed buying decision. The OnePlus 15 features a 6.78-inch QHD+ (1,272 x 2,772 pixels) AMOLED display, offering up to a 165Hz refresh rate. The iQOO 15 sports a 6.85-inch 2K Samsung M14 8T LTPO AMOLED display with up to a 144Hz refresh rate. Both phones feature the same chipset.

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From Chaos To Champions: How Sjoerd Marijne Rebuilt Indian Women's Hockey Team

“The job is not done yet.” Sjoerd Marine sounded typically understated when midfielder Neha explored the head coach's reaction on India's entry into the Asian Games final. But a day later, India ended a prolonged 44-year wait, grabbing the women's hockey gold beating Paris Olympic silver medallists China 1-0 in the final. The team also secured qualification for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Soon, Marijne settled into a well-deserved celebration time with his players in the locker room.  But the Dutchman, who returned as India's head coach in January, inherited a divided dressing room short on confidence and disrupted by injuries.

However, nine months later, he transformed that group into a fearless, united side that produced its best World Cup finish — fifth — in 52 years before adding an Asian Games gold.

Marijne struck an immediate chord with the players, giving instructions, mostly in Hindi: “thoda aage,” “peeche ja,” “Deepu, bhag,” “Shilpi pass.”

There have been no elaborate '70-minute' speeches before important matches, as he believed in his players.

The players too think that Marijne has given them clarity and freedom, allowing them to express themselves on the field.

That approach has worked from young defender Sakshi Rana to veteran goalkeeper Savita Punia.

But a year ago, such a turnaround was difficult to imagine.

An inconsistent India were eliminated from the FIH Pro League and injuries had further unsettled the squad.

Marijne gradually turned the wheel.

India returned to the Pro League after winning the FIH Nations Cup, then finished a historic fifth at the World Cup despite 11 players making their debuts in the tournament.

However, his rebuilding process was not entirely about tactics. He eliminated divisions within the group and created a sense of collectiveness, resorting to methods like tying unity bands around the players' wrists.

The support staff too played an important role in that process, with scientific advisor Wayne Lombard, drag-flick consultant Taeke Takema, assistant coach Mathias Villa and other performance specialists working closely with the players.

The results were evident at the World Cup, where India lost only once— to co-hosts and eventual champions the Netherlands — with both goals coming from penalty corners.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also acknowledged Marijne's contribution while addressing the Indian diaspora at The Hague during his visit to the Netherlands in May.

“Dutch coaches have also contributed significantly to improving Indian hockey. Our women's hockey team has been performing exceptionally well for some time now. Coach Marijne has played a key role in this,” Modi had said.

But deep inside, Marijne will know that the Asian Games triumph still constitutes only the first step, however glossy it is.

The road to the Los Angeles Olympics begins now — for him and the team.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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