SportsPosted at: Sep 25 2026 5:39PM


Asian Games athletics: Manpreet becomes third Indian woman to win shot put medal

New Delhi, Sep 25 (UNI) Manpreet Kaur became only the third Indian woman to win an Asian Games shot put medal as the 36-year-old secured bronze at the Aichi-Nagoya Games on Friday.
Manpreet produced a best throw of 17.17m to finish behind Chinese duo of Song Jiayuan’s season best effort of 19.40m and Zhang Linru (18.14m), joining Barbara Webster, who won bronze in 1951, and Kiran Baliyan, who claimed the same medal at Hangzhou in 2023.
The medal capped another chapter in a career that has seen Manpreet overcome personal setbacks and a four-year doping ban that wiped out her results, including an Asian Championships gold and the national record she had set with an 18.86m throw in 2017.
She started slowly on Friday with 16.32m but improved with every attempt before finally crossing 17m with her fourth throw.
Her 17.17m effort was enough to secure bronze, adding another major medal to a career that has repeatedly demanded a comeback.
Manpreet had finished fifth at the 2023 Asian Games and fourth at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, where she threw 17.49m.
Earlier this year, she won the National Inter-State Championships with 17.75m, comfortably clearing the Asian Games qualifying standard of 16.25m.
But her journey to this point has been anything but straightforward. Born in Ambala, Haryana, Manpreet lost her father, a farmer, when she was just 13.
Soon afterwards, her mother was left paralysed. Sport became an unlikely escape, with her cousins, one a 100m sprinter and another a discus thrower, introducing her to athletics. She initially trained as a sprinter before switching to shot put after her cousin felt she had greater potential in the throwing events.
After completing Class 12, Manpreet joined the Indian Railways, giving her the financial stability to continue her education and sporting career.
Her international debut came at the 2006 Asian Junior Championships, where she finished eighth.
Her breakthrough came in 2015 when she won the National Open Athletics Championships in Kolkata with a throw of 17.96m, setting a national record and qualifying for the Rio Olympics. She became the only Indian woman to compete in the Olympic shot put at those Games, finishing 23rd with 17.06m.
Two years later, however, her career took a dramatic turn. Manpreet tested positive for prohibited substances on four occasions in 2017, including at the Asian Athletics Championships and the Asian Grand Prix in Jinhua, China. She was handed a four-year ban by the National Anti-Doping Agency in 2019, backdated to her provisional suspension in July 2017.
All her results from that period were disqualified, costing her the Asian Championships gold and the 18.86m national record she had set in Jinhua, a mark that had briefly put her at the top of the world rankings.
Manpreet returned to competition in 2022 and quickly showed she was not finished. In June that year, she threw 18.06m in Chennai to reclaim the national record and qualify for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
She finished 12th in the Commonwealth Games final but continued her comeback, winning bronze at the 2023 Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok.
Later that year at Hangzhou, she finished fifth with 16.25m as compatriot Kiran Baliyan won bronze, giving India its first Asian Games women’s shot put medal since Webster’s bronze in 1951.
Now, three years later, the 36-year-old Manpreet has added her own name to that small list. UNI TB SAS
Tags: #Asian Games athletics: Manpreet becomes third Indian woman to win shot put medal
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