CWG 2026: Indian boxers assure five more medals; Toor, Gill reach shot put final

Indian boxers enjoyed a perfect day at the Commonwealth Games, with five more pugilists reaching the semifinals to guarantee medals. Shot putters Tajinderpal Singh Toor and Samardeep Singh Gill also qualified for the final, while swimmers and weightlifter Sanjana endured disappointing outings

Glasgow: Indian boxers lorded the ring to enter semifinals of various weight categories, assuring five more medals while Tajinderpal Singh Toor and Samardeep Singh Gill retained medal hopes in athletics moving into the shot put final at the Commonwealth Games here on Wednesday.

Narender Berwal (90+kg), Ankush Panghal (80kg), Sakshi Chaudhary (51kg), Arundhati Choudhary (70kg) and Sachin Siwach (60kg) advanced to the semifinals, making it five wins out of five bouts for the country on the day.

---

With the five wins on the day, the number of Indian boxers in the semifinals rose to nine as the feat has already eclipsed India’s total boxing tally from the Birmingham 2022 — three gold, one silver and three bronze.

India are now assured of at least nine bronze medals in the iteration of CWG.

The aforementioned five boxers joined Lovlina Borgohain (75kg), Priya Ghanghas (60kg), Preeti Pawar (54kg) and Jadumani Singh (55kg) in the semifinals.

Meanwhile, shot putters Tajinderpal Singh and Gill qualified for the final round without breaking much sweat.

National record holder Toor took two attempts to breach the automatic qualification mark of 20m in Group A.

His first effort measured 19.93m before coming up with 20.14m in his second throw.

In qualification round Group B, Gill’s best effort of the day was 19.95m which came in his opening attempt.

His second throw measured 19.75m and the third a foul. Gill finished fifth overall out of 15 who competed across the two groups.

Those who breached the 20m mark or the 12 best performers qualified for the finals to be held on Thursday.

India had one more silver-lining from the track as national record holder Animesh Kujur clocked his season best time to qualify for the 200m semifinals.

The 23-year-old Kujur ran 20.46 seconds to win Heat 4 in round one races and finish seventh overall.

The 16 fastest runners from across 10 heats advance to the semifinals to be held on Thursday.

However, there was no joy for India from the lifting arena as Sanjana bowed out of the women’s 77 kg category with a Do Not Finish (DNF).

A similar story was enacted in the pool as well after swimmers Sajan Prakash and Aneesh S Gowda failed to qualify for the men’s 200m freestyle final.

Prakash signed off a disappointing fifth in his heat and 20th overall with 1.51.99 seconds.

The 32-year-old finished behind debutant compatriot Aneesh, who too failed to move ahead by finishing 18th overall with a timing of 1:51.64 seconds.

However, para swimmers Suyash Narayan Jadhav and Chaitanya Vishwas Kulkarni qualified for Men’s 50m Freestyle S7.