The surge of medals in track and field played a key part in pushing India’s tally past the century mark at the Hangzhou Asian Games. India won 29 medals (6-14-9) in athletics for their best Asian Games haul and the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) president, Adille Sumariwalle, said the performance showed things are on right track for Paris Olympics next year.

“We won 27 medals at the Asian Athletics Championships in July despite some of the big names like Neeraj Chopra not participating (Avinash Sable also didn’t compete in Bangkok). So, we expected we will do well at the Asian Games, it was only a matter of how well we would perform,” he said.

“We will do better at the Paris Olympics compared to Tokyo. Look at the progression. In London (2012) we had just 14 athletes. The number increased in 2016 Rio and in Tokyo. You will see a greater number qualifying for Paris and making it to the final,” said Sumariwalla on the sidelines of a felicitation for the Asian Games athletics squad by AFI.

Some Indian athletes were at the receiving end of poor officiating in Hangzhou and AFI has raised the matter with World Athletics (WA). “There were technical issues, not only in athletics, we saw that in kabaddi too. The kabaddi final was stopped for an hour."

"We have brought it to the notice of World Athletics and Olympic Council of Asia. Now it is the job of international federations to look into these issues,” said Sumariwalla, who is also a World Athletics vice-president.