Meet Baranica Elangovan, India’s first pole vault medallist across Asian Games, CWG and Olympics

Extraordinary day for India at the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. 29-year-old Baranica Elangovan has won India’s first-ever pole vault medal in the Asian Games. The athlete from Tamil Nadu cleared 4.15m to bag a bronze medal for the country. In fact, she is the first Indian to win a pole vault medal at one of the following three big events: Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and the Olympics.

Baranica, who earlier this year set a national record at 4.22m at the National Indoor Athletics Championships at Bhubaneswar, breaking Rosy Meena’s 4.21m set previously, finally went for 4.25m but she failed to clear it in three attempts. It may be noted that after the above-mentioned Bhubaneshwar event, she bettered her national record with 4.23m at the Indian Indoor Open Combined Events and Pole Vault Competition in May but it didn’t last long as G Sindhushree broke it with 4.25m just weeks later. Sindhushree was also part of the event on Friday, but she failed to live up to expectations as she registered “No Mark”.

This year has been fantastic for Baranica. In May, she also won gold medals at the Indian Open Athletics Series in Chennai and the 29th National Senior Athletics Competition at Ranchi. At both events, she did 4.10m.

Baranica was unfortunate to miss out on the last Asian Games in Hangzhou. A sub-standard performance at an inter-state meet in Bhubaneshwar cost her a place in the Asiad squad for the China event three years ago.

At the start of her athletic career, Baranica was a long jumper as well as a sprinter, but later she took up pole vault at college. Milber Bertrand Russel coached her for several years and deserves a lot of credit for her historic triumph that has made the entire country proud.

The remarkable thing about her is that she has improved over the years. She had her share of injuries too but she eventually overcame them to be where she is today. “After facing an ACL injury in 2020 and a challenging period of rehabilitation, she moved to the Reliance Foundation High Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar in 2023, where improved training and recovery facilities helped her make significant progress,” a Sports Authority of India (SAI) bio on the athlete said. “Her progression reflects years of perseverance, technical development and dedicated training,” the SAI bio added.

Like so many other athletes in the country, she comes from a humble background. Her father is a farmer and mother, a homemaker. Anyway, the gold went to Japan’s Misaki Morota, who cleared 4.55m (her personal best). China’s Chunge Niu picked up silver at 4.50m.