Kolkata, Sept. 12 -- India won 28 gold medals in the last Asian Games, the most ever by the country that hosted the first iteration of this competition in 1951. India won 15 gold in the inaugural Asian Games, its highest haul till the Hangzhou Games that was scheduled for 2022 but held in 2023 due to Covid-19. The injury to two-time Olympic medallist Neeraj Chopra has speared his hopes of being in Japan's Aichi-Nagoya for the Games, which returns to its four-year cycle and will be held from September 19 through October 4, to defend his javelin gold. Three years is a long time in sport-Harinder Pal Sandhu, who won gold in the men's team and mixed events, will go as the squash team coach this time around-and a lot can change for things as fickle as form and fitness. So, Chopra will not be the only Indian gold medallist from the last Games to not be around this time. Sift Kaur Samra, who won the women's 50m rifle 3 positions event with a world record score of 469.6 points, is among notable exclusions in the shooting squad that bagged seven gold medals in the last edition. Swapnil Kusale, who medalled in the Paris Olympics, did not make the men's rifle 3 positions team squad which won gold in 2023. Of the three who took the team gold, also with a world record score of 1769 points, only Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, who has medalled in 11 events since the Games, retained his place in the team where Rudrankksh Patil and Niraj Kumar are the new entrants. It is the same in the men's trap with Kynan Chenai common to the team that won the gold and the one that will defend it. Ditto in the men's 10m air rifle. Patil, the former world champion who won the individual gold in the Asian Championship Rifle/Pistol in New Delhi this year and is ranked 23rd in the world, the only shooter to keep his berth. That can't be said for the team event-all are new members with Olympic bronze medallist Sarabjot Singh, 24, a key exclusion. Palak Gulia will not defend the women's 10m air pistol gold she took with a Games record score of 242.1 after squeezing into the final in seventh place. Jyothi Surekha Vennam, who also holds an MBA degree, is the only link between the compound archery teams that swept five gold medals and the one headed to Aichi-Nagoya. Ojas Deotale, who like Vennam won three gold medals (men's individual, team and mixed), missed the cut finishing fifth in the trials. Rajesh Ramesh alone has retained his place in the men's 4x400 relay team that beat the challenge of Qatar and Sri Lanka to finish first in 3:01.58. Rohan Bopanna has retired since winning the tennis mixed doubles gold with Rutuja Bhosale and Hriday Chheda is the only one from the four-member dressage team that won India's first equestrianism gold after 1982 travelling to Japan. Chedda will be on Dono Di Maggio and not Chemxpro Emerald, his ride in Hangzhou. Abhay Singh, who won gold in the last three Asian doubles championships, is the only member of the podium-topping 2023 men's squash team in Aichi-Nagoya. But as India aims to improve its medal haul of 107 from the last Games, it will need to rely on some of those in Japan to defend their title. Headlining the list will be Tajinderpal Singh Toor who is aiming for a hattrick of men's shot put gold. The 31-year-old from Punjab is the Games record holder with his throw of 20.75m in 2018 and was the Asian record holder as well between June 19, 2023 and June 21, 2024 when Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Tolo bettered Toor's record of 21.77m set in Bhubaneswar by three centimetres. Toor had a poor performance in the Paris Olympics, his best of 18.05m fetching him the 29th spot. But he won the Asian indoor title in 2024 and finished fifth in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games with a throw of 20.27m. The short turnaround between CWG and Asian Games will test Toor's ability to improve on that but he will head to the India Athletics Finals Series in New Delhi on September 10 knowing that his best this year has been 21.03m, in the third leg of this competition in the Capital. The same cannot be said of Avinash Sable, the 3000m steeplechase gold medallist with a Games record time of 8:19.50. The man from Beed, Maharashtra, has owned the national record in this event since 2018, the latest version of which is 8:09.91 and was set over two years ago in the Diamond League in Paris. He qualified for the final in the 2024 Olympics but has not been running this event since a stumble in Monaco last year following which he had to undergo surgery for an ACL injury. He returned to steeplechase on Thursday to let India breathe a sigh of relief. Toor, Sable and Parul Chaudhary are the same age. Chaudhary's fantastic surge at the finish of the women's 5000m fetched her gold and she has since won silver in the 2025 Asian championship, but her timing of 15:15.33 was slower than her Asian Games effort (15:14.75) and well behind Kazakhstan's Norah Jeruto (14:58.71). Good news is that Chaudhary lowered the national record shaving nearly six seconds off her own mark in Nice in June to easily qualify for the Games. "Compared to last time, I'm more experienced and I have seen a little improvement in every aspect of my skills," Chaudhary has said. Annu Rani, 33, was among the six Indian gold medallists in athletics, and her best of 62.92m fetched the women's javelin gold. But the national record holder with a throw of 63.82m in May 2022 has not gone past 60m in over a year. Shooting fetched India seven gold and Manu Bhaker, a double Olympics medallist since the Asian Games, will be back to defend India's team title in the women's 25m pistol. The veteran two-time Asian Games medallist Rahi Sarnobat returns to the team instead of Rhythm Sangwan with world No. 1 Esha Singh completing the trio. The 2022 Asian Games trio won gold in this year's Asian Championship Rifle/Pistol in New Delhi with a score of 1751, five points less than what they had logged in Hangzhou. Esha Singh and Bhaker finished 2-3 in the individual event. Esha Singh, 21, also won gold in the 25m individual event in the Munich and Hangzhou World Cups this year and silver in Buenos Aires in 2025. The only badminton gold in Games history came from the men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty who missed out on the medal rounds of the recent World Championship but won the Super 750 Singapore Open and the China Masters either side of it this year. "On that day if Satwik-Chirag are in good form, they can beat anyone," India doubles coach Tan Kim Her has said. Even if the hottest thing in white-ball cricket Vaibhav Sooryavanshi doesn't travel, Her's words would ring true for the men's and women's cricket teams, the reigning World T20 and 50-over World Cup champions respectively, the kabaddi teams and the men's hockey side. Eighth in the recent World Cup, the men's hockey team will need to put behind them poor finishes in the FIH Pro League if they are aiming for something India never have achieved in the Asian Games: retain the gold....