Harsh, Tejaswin win Delhi’s only medals at Glasgow Commonwealth Games

Promising judoka Harsh Singh and ace decathlete Tejaswin Shankar won Delhi’s only medals at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, clinching gold and bronze, respectively.

Harsh won the men’s 60kg title, becoming the first Indian male judoka to claim a Commonwealth Games gold. His was India’s second judo gold at the Games, coming shortly after Asmita Dey of Tripura won the women’s 48kg title.

Tejaswin became the first Indian to win a Commonwealth Games medal in the decathlon. He had won bronze in the high jump at the 2022 Birmingham Games, making him the first Indian athlete to claim Commonwealth Games medals in two different track-and-field individual events.

Harsh, 23, and Tejaswin, 27, accounted for Delhi’s entire medal haul in Glasgow. Their success, however, could not mask the Capital’s meagre overall return.

Both athletes have performed consistently at the national and international levels. Harsh, a havildar in the Indian Army, competes in the men’s 60kg judo category. Tejaswin, who studied accounting and finance at Kansas State University, has competed in the decathlon, high jump and triple jump in his career.

Haryana leads by a distance

Delhi has an estimated population of 2.3 crore, according to initial Census 2027 figures. An unofficial state-wise break-up of India’s medals showed several other states producing more medallists than the Capital.

Population alone, however, is an imperfect measure of sporting performance. Medal tallies are also shaped by the number of athletes fielded, the disciplines in which they compete and the sporting infrastructure available to them.

Haryana, traditionally one of India’s strongest sporting states, led the state-wise tally with 11 medals. With a population of 3.14 crore, the state won seven of India’s 13 gold medals, all through its boxers.

Athletes from Manipur, which has a population of around 33 lakh, won four medals. Tamil Nadu, with approximately 7.75 crore people, claimed three. Overall, athletes from 16 states and union territories won medals in Glasgow.

Athletes move away

Delhi is often described as lacking the entrenched sporting culture found in states such as Haryana and Manipur, despite possessing good sporting infrastructure.

Delhi Chief Athletics Coach Dinesh Rawat said the movement of senior athletes to other states was among the reasons for the Capital’s limited return.

“Some athletes, especially from Delhi-NCR, represent Delhi when they are young,” Rawat told Patriot.

He said that once they grew older and found jobs, they often left the city, shifted their base and represented another state at the senior level.

Rawat cited Neeru Pathak, Jai Kumar and Kumari Saloni Nagar as examples from the Glasgow Games. Pathak competes in the women’s 4x400m relay, while Kumar participates in the 400m and the men’s 4x400m relay. Nagar competed in the 400m.

“This poses a disadvantage for Delhi athletics,” Rawat said.

He nevertheless expressed hope that the situation would improve.

“As far as athletics is concerned, it is a sport for the poor. Generally speaking, they cannot afford a good diet,” he said. “But new kids are coming up, and in four or five years, Delhi athletics will hopefully improve.”

A transient sporting base

Others have offered different explanations for Delhi’s inability to match India’s best-performing states.

In late 2024, former world pistol champion Jaspal Rana, who died on June 12, 2026, attributed Delhi’s below-par performance in shooting partly to its transient population.

“Delhi is a transit city for a lot of people,” Rana, a four-time Asian Games gold medallist and then Chairman of the Delhi State Rifle Association, told Patriot.

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He said bureaucrats, politicians and members of the armed forces, among others, often came to Delhi for limited periods before moving elsewhere because of their jobs. “They keep travelling from city to city, and so do their families,” he said.

“So, you don’t have people staying in Delhi for a long time and training. Youngsters who live in Delhi are academically oriented. Considering the time they spend in Delhi, they are doing pretty well in shooting,” Rana insisted.

Delhi nevertheless has some of the best shooting facilities in the country, including Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range.