With double Asian Games silver, Himanshu Dhillon has a birthday to remember

Himanshu Singh won his maiden senior individual individual medal in the men’s 10m air rifle at the ongoing Asian Games 2026. | Photo Credit: RV Moorthy

On Monday morning, the 21st of September, just as he does every day, Shamsher Dhillon sent his son Himanshu a motivational message over WhatsApp. But this day wasn’t like any other. Shamsher first wished Himanshu a happy birthday. Then he told the newly turned 21-year-old Himanshu, who was also about to make his debut at the Asian Games, to make the day a special one. “ Jo bhi ho, ek medal jodna hai Bharat ke liye. Kaunsa bhi jude woh tere pe hai [Whatever happens, we need to add a medal to India’s tally. The colour of the medal depends on you],” he said.

Himanshu would do just that. At the Aichi Prefecture Shooting Range, he first shot a 630 in the qualification round to help the Indian team, which also included Rudrankksh Patil and Parth Mane, secure a team silver in the men’s 10m air rifle event. Then, in the final, he first got past former world champion and teammate Rudrankksh and also came within sniffing distance of double Olympic champion and World No. 1 Sheng Lihao before eventually bringing home another silver in the individual event.

As they stood on that finals range, hearts raced with the tempo of marathon runners, and muscles strained as hard as possible to prevent even the minutest natural movements of the body. If Himanshu had to fight hard to win his first individual senior international medal, it needed Lihao to break his own Asian Games record to keep the young Indian debutant at bay. Indeed, over the course of the final, Himanshu shot three scores of 10.9 – the perfect centre of a ring that’s itself less than the width of a ballpoint pen’s nib. He was within 0.2 points of the Chinese shooter at one stage — literally a fingernail’s width if measured on the target — before a single weak shot of 9.8 towards the endgame gave Lihao the lead, which he wouldn’t forfeit until the finish.

For his part, Himanshu gamely fought on until the end, shooting a 10.8 (as close to perfect without being perfect) in his final shot of the competition against the Chinese machine’s 10.6.

Harder than it looks

After he walked out of the finals hall exhausted, Himanshu allowed himself to crack a grin. For the fact that he had two Asian Games medals clinking against each other around his neck, and that he once decided he would become a shooter because he thought it would be easy.

“ Mujhe laga tha wrestling se toh behtar hoga [I thought it would definitely be better than wrestling],” he had once told Sportstar.

Growing up in the village of Dauhla in Haryana’s Jind, Himanshu was indeed originally supposed to be a wrestler. There was precedent in his family. Himanshu’s uncle is Hardeep Dhillon, a two-time Asian wrestling medallist who also competed for India in the 97kg category at the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2018 Asian Games.

𝐇𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐮 𝐃𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐧 🥈
𝐑𝐮𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐤𝐬𝐡 𝐏𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐥 🥉

India secured a double podium at the Asian Games 2026 in the men's 10m air rifle final 🇮🇳

Himanshu finished with a score of 252.4, while Rudrankksh ended with 230.9. Sheng topped the field with an impressive… pic.twitter.com/bLvMvPsrHo

— Sportstar (@sportstarweb) September 21, 2026

When Himanshu was 13, he was packed off to a residential gurukul (school) to perhaps train as a wrestler or at very least get a bit active. “I was really sust (lazy). So my parents thought it would help me gain a little independence,” he recalls. Introduced to wrestling, though, he soon realised he wanted very little to do with it.

“The first day I trained as a wrestler, I got so many aches and pains. I decided right then that I needed to find something where I wasn’t going to get injured,” he remembers thinking. As luck would have it, the gurukul also had a shooting range. “I thought at least this would be easier,” he thought then.

On his very first shot, Himanshu recalls barely hitting the target, and while shooting was simply the easier of his options, it soon became obvious that Himanshu had natural talent. “At first he was using his academy’s rifle, but within six months his coach came to me and said he needed to buy an individual air gun. At that time I didn’t want to say yes because each one of these guns cost 3 lakh rupees. But Himanshu’s coach came to me and said, ‘Your son is special’. He said, ‘There’s no damn way he won’t be a successful shooter’,” Shamsher recalls.

Indian Rifle Shooter Himanshu Dhillon got past former world champion and teammate Rudrankksh Patil and also came within sniffing distance of double Olympic champion and World No. 1 Sheng Lihao  | Photo Credit: RV Moorthy

Indeed, the family had so much trust in those words that they moved from their village to the town of Kaithal, some 35 kilometres away, where he could train.

Even after the family moved and after the purchase of a gun, Himanshu wasn’t completely obsessed with the sport. “I was like any other child. On some days I would be very dedicated, and other days I just wanted to do masti [fun] with my friends,” he says.

New purpose

It would take a national lockdown to give him purpose. When India shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, Himanshu’s academy closed as well. He moved back with his family to his village, where he was tasked with working in the family’s fields. He realised soon enough that he needed to get serious with his life. “ Kheti mere bas ki nahi hai. I need to focus on a sport jahan aaram se AC me baith ke shoot goli chala sakte hain [farm work is out of my ability. I need to focus on a sport where I can sit inside an AC and shoot],” he says.

The reasoning may have been irreverent, but somewhere along the way Himanshu found his calling. As he trained harder, the laziness he had once complained about began to disappear.

“I don’t think I would have been a good wrestler because I was just very passive. But when I picked up the rifle, all that aggression came naturally to me. When I shoot, I think about how I’m going to hit a big score every time,” he says.

Even as he trained more sincerely, Himanshu’s never lost his slightly uncomplicated view of shooting. “It’s not that hard. Shooting is about controlling your feeling, breathing and not thinking so much. In shooting, there’s nothing but just doing this,” he says.

His potential started to bear out. Coming through the junior ranks. He made his way through the nationals, eventually making his first junior team last year. Competing in two Junior World Cups, he won gold in New Delhi. When he moved into the seniors this year, he once again showed just what he’s capable of, shooting a mammoth 635.7 in qualification at the Munich World Cup. It’s those sorts of performances that also saw him make it to the Indian team for the Asian Games.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒖𝒑 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒍𝒚, 𝒏𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒚 1⃣6⃣ 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕.

Two Indian shooters, both former World No. 1s from Tamil Nadu, won Asian Games silver medals in the same two events 🥈

Gagan Narang finished second in both the individual and team… pic.twitter.com/QdPatWLcBU

— Sportstar (@sportstarweb) September 21, 2026

Thrown into the biggest competition of his career yet, it would have been easy for Himanshu to get overawed by the position he found himself in. But even as he stood next to some of the best shooters in the world, he says he kept his composure. “When you go into the changing room, you see all these great shooters, and you think, what am I doing here? But then you get to the firing line, and you realise that everyone is starting from zero. Tab dekhte hain kaun sabse tagda hai [That’s when we can see who is the best],” he says.

And when he prepared to take his first shot, the aggression that Himanshu never knew he had for so long burst forth. “I always think marunga hi marunga [I will definitely hit],” he says. That mentality never changed even as he pushed Lihao to the limit. “I knew I was in the medal race. But I was fully immersed. I was only thinking about following my process, controlling my thinking, controlling my breathing. I told myself to follow the process and baki jo lagega woh bhad me jaye [to hell with where the shot goes],” he says.

Although he gave an almighty effort, on Monday, he ultimately fell just short. He’ll likely have more opportunities to come. Maybe even get the better of Lihao himself some day. For now, though, he’s more than satisfied with how he’s done. As far as 21st birthdays go, he shouldn’t have much reason to complain.

“I don’t think I could have got a better birthday gift,” he says.