Sharmila’s 9.81m, India’s first para-athletics CWG gold
From polio at two to a 9.81m season-best in Glasgow, Sharmila Dhankar wins women’s F57 shot put and writes India into Commonwealth Games para-athletics history. The medal is recorded; the rest she tells in her own words.
Sharmila Dhankar won the women’s F57 shot put with a 9.81-metre throw.
Sharmila Dhankar won gold in the women’s F57 shot put at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow with a 9.81-metre throw, a season best, making her India’s first Commonwealth Games para-athletics gold medallist, according to multiple reports. The event is on the Games programme, which lists F57 shot put as a medal discipline.
Reports say Ghana’s Zinabu Issah took silver at 8.65m, and India’s Shilpa K Shyla was upgraded to bronze after Nigeria’s Eucharia Iyiazi was disqualified. The Indian Express records all three outcomes alongside Dhankar’s mark and first-place finish.
Dhankar, 40, contracted polio at age two, entered para athletics in her thirties, won a national title in 2021, and finished fourth at Birmingham 2022 and at the 2023 Asian Para Games, per multiple accounts. She trained under Tek Chand and later Virender Dhankar.
Her backstory — dowry-linked abuse, being beaten and expelled from her first marriage, and neighbours helping her — appears across interviews and is explicitly presented as her own account in each report. The quotes are powerful; they are also testimony, not a court record.
Post-win, she told reporters she wants to keep bringing glory at the Asian Games and Olympics. For now, India’s para-athletics column at the Commonwealth Games starts with 9.81 metres and her name.