Asian Games 2026: Elavenil Valarivan’s silver worth its weight in gold

Elavenil Valarivan won India’s first individual medal of the Nagoya Asian Games. | Photo Credit: RV MOORTHY

A silver medal can be a bittersweet achievement. It can mean you came second. Or, depending on how the competition unfolded, it can leave you wondering how close you came to winning gold.

There was perhaps a hint of that feeling in the first call Elavenil Valarivan immediately made after finishing second in the women’s 10m air rifle competition at the Nagoya Asian Games.

“I missed a gold! I was so close!” she told her coach, Neha Chavan, back in Chennai.

You could understand why she felt that way. The 27-year-old opened with a perfect 10.9 and led for much of the 24-shot final. She kept the Chinese shooters off the podium and pushed Olympic champion Ban Hyo-jin into third place. Gold had seemed within Elavenil’s grasp before a late stumble in the final three shots opened the door for Japan’s Hinata Taichi to move in front and win the title by 0.6 points, 253.0 to 252.4.

But Elavenil’s post-match call conveyed only part of how she felt. The rest is written in a scrapbook in which she makes a little note every time she shoots. But more on that in a while.

Elavenil’s medal is no ordinary silver.

You could see that in the beaming smile on her face as she held it up on the podium.

“I have a lot of gratitude. I’m trying to practise saying these words a lot more frequently and I’m just grateful I could win these medals,” she told Sportstar outside the Aichi Prefecture Shooting Range.

This was India’s first individual medal of the Nagoya Asian Games. It followed the team silver alongside Vidarsa Vinod and Sonam Maskar that Elavenil had helped secure in the qualification round earlier that morning.

More personally, both were the first medals Elavenil had won at a multi-sport Games.

“I’ve been competing at these multi-event Games for the last eight years. I’ve finally got my first medals,” she said.

When you look at her career, that statistic seems a strange sort of anomaly.

Ever since Olympic medallist Gagan Narang spotted her as a 14-year-old in Ahmedabad, there was a sense that Elavenil had something special. She has been competing internationally since 2018, when she was 18, and has since won medals at the Asian Championships, World Cups, World Cup Finals and World Championships.

She has also represented India at three major multi-sport Games — the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the Paris Games in 2024.

Yet she had never had a medal from one of them to show for it. At all three, she failed to make it beyond the qualification round.

There was more than enough time, then, for memories of those past disappointments to flood her mind during the one-and-a-half-hour drive from her team hotel in the port city of Nagoya, through winding hairpin bends and up into the hills towards the Shooting Range.

Instead, she looked out at the verdant mountainside and plugged in her earphones. Her playlist was a smorgasbord of Western rock, Punjabi belters, Bollywood hits and Tamil film classics.

“I’ve had a long journey from the time I first started competing. So when I got selected for these Asian Games, the first conversation I had with my coach Neha was that I had got my second opportunity to compete at an Asian Games eight years after my first. I was just grateful that I was getting the chance to be part of an Indian contingent and represent the country,” she said.

Elavenil shot an unruffled 633.5 to qualify for the final and help ensure India finished ahead of both Japan and Korea. | Photo Credit: RV MOORTHY

Before the competition, Elavenil had spoken to Neha, who has been part of her journey since she first picked up an air rifle 13 years ago.

“Neha just told me that I’d put in all the hard work already. She said, ‘You’ve trained your absolute best. Just trust your technique and be courageous,’” Elavenil recalled.

The first step was simply qualifying for the final. There was no guarantee that would happen.

After the first series of shooters had completed their qualification round, Elavenil knew she would need to be at her best not only to make the individual final but also to keep India in contention for a team medal.

At the start of her series, India trailed Japan by 0.7 points and Korea by 2.9 points in the team event. Those were the gaps Elavenil had to close.

She did so without missing a beat, shooting an unruffled 633.5 to qualify for the final and help ensure India finished ahead of both Japan and Korea.

That is why Elavenil’s emotions cannot simply be summed up by how she felt after the final.

Alongside the various odds and ends of equipment, snacks and kit in her shooting kitbag, Elavenil carries a small scrapbook to every competition. Once she has finished competing, she writes down how she thinks she has done. It is an immediate and honest assessment of her emotions, one she says she uses to get better in the future.

On Sunday morning, at the end of the qualification round in the women’s 10m air rifle competition, Elavenil fished it out and wrote down a single sentence.

“I did my best today.”

Published on Sep 20, 2026

Latest on Sportstar

1. Live Blog 2026-09-20T17:48:53+05:30

   Bournemouth vs Liverpool LIVE — Iraola returns to old home for BOU v LIV in Premier League
2. Asian Games 2026: Full September 21 schedule, IST timings and Indians in action

3. Live Blog 2026-09-20T17:25:25+05:30

   Manchester City vs Sunderland LIVE score: Haaland, Cherki in starting lineup for MCI v SUN; Premier League updates