The runner no one expected wins India’s first Asian Games marathon medal in 44 years

Sawan Barwal, 28, became the first Indian to win a marathon medal at the Asian Games since 1982. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

There was no Indian flag waiting for Sawan Barwal at the finish line.

A few metres away, Japan’s gold medallist Ichitaka Yamashita and China’s bronze medallist Peiyou Feng had already wrapped themselves in their national colours. Barwal stood between them in his blue India bib, smiling after creating a piece of Indian sporting history, but with no tricolour to drape around his shoulders.

It was an incongruous end to a morning when the 28-year-old had become the first Indian in nearly half a century to win an Asian Games marathon medal.

The race itself, was far less eventful compared to the first time Barwal rewrote Indian distance-running history.

Five months ago, Barwal blacked out, fell and eventually scrambled to his feet in Rotterdam to erase India’s oldest standing national mark — the 48-year-old men’s marathon record.

Early on Saturday morning in Nagoya, there was none of that drama. Barwal nearly skipped to the finish line at Paloma Mizuho Stadium. The Army man from Himachal Pradesh isn’t the most expressive of characters, but he waved and cracked a smile as he cruised through the last few hundred metres of the 42.195km race.

Although gold was out of his reach, he was nearly half a minute ahead of the rest of the field. He knew a medal was assured.

Barwal crossed the finish line in 2:11:37, smashing the national record — his own this time, by 22 seconds. You know the slightly built 28-year-old could have run even faster. Sawan was barely out of breath when speaking a few minutes after his race. But the medal mattered more. It was India’s first marathon medal at the Asian Games since 1982 and its first in the event at an Asian Games held outside India.

“I’m really happy that after a very long time, after so many years, India has been able to win a medal in the marathon at the Asian Games. This is a huge achievement for me,” the 28-year-old said after the race.

It’s an achievement not many might have predicted. The lack of the flag was because there was no official who decided to make it to the stadium at 9 a.m. on a drizzly morning in Nagoya. You could only guess it was because no one really expected an Indian marathoner to win a medal.

#ICYMI 🥈

𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐧'𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐧! 🇮🇳

Sawan Barwal clocked a National Record of 2:11:37 to finish second at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games 2026, behind Japan's Ichitaka Yamashita (2:10:49).

Barwal bettered his own National Record,… pic.twitter.com/WRTox8eYsT

— Sportstar (@sportstarweb) September 26, 2026

On paper, that was indeed the case. Eleven of the 19 runners entered in the marathon in Nagoya had personal bests faster than Barwal. Five had run under 2:06:00, nearly six minutes faster than the Indian.

But Sawan was convinced he could do it. “The plan was always to challenge for the podium. I had been training for this moment for so long, so if I didn’t win a medal, all of it would have felt like a waste of effort,” he would say later.

American coach Scott Simmons, with whom Barwal has been training for the past half a year in the USA, also believed he had a chance.

“Their PBs were impressive but they hadn’t been as strong this year. Also, in a championship race like the Asian Games, no one is going to try to run fast. I had a feeling we would have a 2:11-2:12 pace and there would be a leading pack that stayed together to the end,” he says.

That was exactly how the race went.

No athlete was interested in setting a fast pace. At the halfway mark, the lead pack had clocked 1:05. That suited Barwal perfectly — he has a half-marathon personal best of 1:03. As the race entered its final third, Barwal continued to stick like a leech to the top group. By the 35km mark, only Yamashita was with him.

Five kilometres later, it was still Yamashita and Barwal, with the rest of the field trailing far behind them.

But that’s exactly the distance where the full weight of running a marathon hits athletes.

“ Last ke 2-3 kilometres sabse tough hote hain (The last 2-3 kilometres are the hardest in the marathon),” Barwal said after his race.

And that’s where memories of Rotterdam might have loomed. He was coasting in that race as well before gassing badly at the finish. That was perhaps understandable. Barwal is not an experienced marathon runner. The Asian Games was only his second race over the distance.

Indeed, until very recently, Barwal never even had dreams of becoming India’s best-ever marathon runner.

Growing up in the village of Radabhanker in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district, Barwal did not begin with lofty ambitions. It is common to find runners pounding mountain trails early in the morning in this region, often in preparation for Army recruitment.

Barwal, however, was not even thinking along those lines.

“A lot of children from my area run because they want to prepare for Army bharti (recruitment). But when I started running in school, it was just because I enjoyed it. At first, I was just happy to run. Then slowly, as I improved, my goals got bigger. I wanted to win a school medal, then a district medal, then a state medal, then a national medal, and eventually become an international athlete. Every time I won a medal, I kept thinking about what I could accomplish next,” Barwal had told Sportstar a few months back.

“I first started running seriously when I was in Class 8. I was introduced to this by my coach. I wasn’t thinking much about the future. I ran because it helped focus my mind and gave me a goal to chase,” he said.

It soon became clear that Barwal had talent. He started as an 800m runner and progressed from the school level to the state and eventually the national level. In 2015, he finished fourth in the men’s 3,000m at the Under-18 National Championships. He had not medalled, but it was enough to keep him in the sport.

RELATED | Sawan Barwal falls, blacks out, but gets up to erase 48-year-old Indian marathon record

Barwal, despite not harbouring ambitions of joining the military, was recruited by the Army the following year. He is currently a havaldar with the Engineering Corps. His coaches there quickly recognised where his strengths lay.

“When we were deciding on recruiting athletes, we performed a VO2 max test on Sawan. His VO2 max reading was 78. That’s really high. Elite Kenyan runners have a VO2 max of between 75 and 85. So we knew Sawan had potential in long-distance running,” Army chief athletics coach Younis Khan, who has trained Barwal at the Army Sports Institute in Pune, explained.

For all his physical ability, Barwal had to wait another five years to win his first medal, a silver in the 10,000m at the National Open Athletics Championships in 2022. The following year, his first international honour came, a bronze medal at the Asian Half Marathon Championships.

Despite progressing steadily in long-distance track events, Barwal initially held off on moving to the marathon.

“The first time I thought about running in the marathon was in 2023. But because we had the Asian Games that year and because I had already done well in the 5,000m, I thought I should stick to that distance,” Barwal said.

He continued to perform well in the 5,000m and 10,000m, winning gold in the latter with a personal best at last year’s National Games and later at the Federation Cup. But his coaches continued to nudge him towards the marathon.

“Last year, Scott Simmons (who had previously coached Commonwealth Games medallist Avinash Sable and currently coaches Gulveer Singh, Indian national record holder in the 5000m and 10000m) suggested I try the marathon. I thought it might be a good chance to qualify for the Asian Games, so I decided to make the move,” Barwal said.

The transition was not seamless. Two months into marathon preparation, Barwal, who trains under Markose as part of the Reliance Foundation Athletics programme, suffered a fall during a run.

“I was supposed to make my marathon debut last year, but because of the fall, I had to give up that plan,” he recalled.

This season, at the Rotterdam Marathon, the goal was to break the national record. Several senior runners felt the plan was too ambitious, but Barwal remained confident. Although he eventually broke it, the race did not go as he had hoped.

“Let’s just say the finish was a little flamboyant,” jokes Simmons.

Sawan Barwal stuck to the leading pack throughout the race before breaking off to finish behind Japan's Ichitaka Yamashita. | Photo Credit: REUTERS

But Simmons was confident there wouldn’t be a repeat of the Rotterdam finish in Nagoya.

Barwal had been training for the past half a year in Colorado Springs under Simmons, and his coach had seen the progress that had been made.

“I think the big difference compared to the past is that India has been investing in its marathon runners. Sawan wasn’t just training for four weeks and then showing up to the Asian Games. He got a solid three-month training block. This is his third block of that kind in Colorado.

“In the USA, Sawan’s been training with marathon runners who run 2:03:45 times and 2:05:00 times. I knew during training that he was in really good shape. He was running hard 40km runs. He was doing tempo runs. And he was still maintaining his 10,000m speed as well. We also did three separate simulations of the marathon,” Simmons says.

In the weeks before Nagoya, Sawan was in the form of his life.

“We have a WhatsApp group with all the runners and some of the Kenyan runners were discussing Sawan. They felt he was in shape to run a 2:08-hour or even 2:07-hour marathon,” Simmons says.

He never had to do that.

With every kilometre he ran, Barwal’s confidence grew.

“I just wanted to stay with the lead group. There were moments when they sped up but I was able to stay with them,” he says.

Barwal stayed with them until it was time to break free.

This time there was no collapse. No scramble to his feet. No flamboyant finish.

Just a clinical performance, a smile and a place in history. And eventually, when he stands on the podium in the evening in Nagoya, an Indian flag where it matters — being raised on the winners flagpole.

Published on Sep 26, 2026

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