Some near-misses hurt more than others, and when measured by pure margin, a handful of Indian results at the 2026 Asian Games stand out as the closest calls of the campaign so far in Nagoya.
## The Closest of All: Two Inner-10s
Nothing has been tighter than India’s women’s 10m air pistol team missing bronze by two inner-10 shots after tying Vietnam on 1719 points. In a sport decided by fractions of a millimetre on the target, it does not get much closer than that.
## Aneesh Sunil’s Narrow Swimming Miss
In the men’s 200m freestyle heats, Aneesh Sunil finished 11th overall with a time of 1:51.20, agonisingly outside the top 10 needed to advance to the final, highlighting how tight qualification margins can be even before the medal rounds begin.
## Suraj Singh Mayanglambam’s Wushu Near-Miss
In the men’s Changquan final, Suraj Singh Mayanglambam finished 11th among 21 competitors with a score of 9.683, a respectable tally that nonetheless fell short of the medal positions in a tightly scored artistic discipline.
## The Mixed Rifle Team’s Wider Gap
By contrast, Elavenil Valarivan and Parth Mane’s fourth-place finish in the 10m air rifle mixed team final came against a dominant Chinese pair who set a world record, making it a clearer miss than the razor-thin margins elsewhere on this list. Our dedicated feature breaks down exactly what happened in that final.
## Why Margins Matter
Ranking these misses by margin tells a different story than simply listing every near-medal finish. Some results, like the air pistol team’s tie-breaker loss, represent genuine coin-flip outcomes, while others reflect a clearer gap to the world’s best.
## The Takeaway
For more on the full list of India’s fourth-place finishes and quarterfinal exits at these Games, see our companion features tracking every close call of India’s 2026 Asian Games campaign in Nagoya.