Sharmila Dhankar, the para-athlete who etched her name into the history books at the 2026 Commonwealth Games, is truly an inspiration.
The Indian athlete – who contracted polio at the age of two, got married at 19, endured an abusive marriage, picked herself up and worked day and night at gruelling jobs – has not had an easy journey to victory.
Dhankar also didn’t take up shot put until she was 34, an age when athletes are usually packing up their bags and thinking of retirement.
But Dhankar didn’t let age stop her, and at 40, she stood on a podium in Glasgow with a Commonwealth Games gold medal around her neck.
Sharmila Dhankar’s Achievement
Sharmila Dhankar is a Haryana-based para-athlete who, on 27 July 2026, became India’s first-ever Commonwealth Games gold medallist in para athletics, winning the women’s shot put F57 event at the Glasgow Games with a season-best throw of 9.81 metres.
The F57 classification is for athletes with lower-limb impairments or significantly reduced muscle power.
Her win ended a 20-year wait for an Indian para athletics medal at the Commonwealth Games – the last had come in 2006 – and gave India a rare double-podium finish in the event after teammate Shilpa K. Shyla was awarded bronze following an official review.
She’s been in the news for two reasons that are really the same story told twice: the medal itself and the almost unbelievable road she took to win it.
Her Journey So Far
Sharmila Dhankar, born on 15 August 1986, hails from Haryana’s Chitrauli village. Coming from an economically struggling family, she said, “My mother was blind, my father was a farmer, and we had very little to survive. Life was never easy.”
Furthermore, Sharmila contracted polio at the age of two, which permanently affected her left leg.
She was married at the age of 19 to a man who was a drug addict. She suffered years of domestic violence before finally leaving with her two daughters. She recalled, “One night, I was beaten from 11 pm to 3 am by my first husband and thrown out of the house. I never went back.”
Sharmila, speaking with The Indian Express, revealed how she had been dragged naked into the street by her ex-husband.
She said, “Mere ko nangi kar ke meri betiyon ke sath sadak pe faink diya tha mere pehle husband ne. (My first husband stripped me naked and threw me and my daughters out of the house.) My neighbours wrapped me in a quilt, and my parents took us away. I was married at 19; he was a drug addict, and things only got worse after my second daughter was born. As I hold this gold medal in Glasgow, my message to every woman and daughter in India is to fight back against abuse.”
Sharmila, speaking with Brut India, also recalled, “The last time it happened, there was beating, and I was thrown out of the house. The neighbours were watching all of this.”
Read More: From Sleeping On Floors To World Cup: Inspiring Journey Of Indian Women’s Cricket Team
She also spoke about how her ex-husband didn’t leave her alone while their divorce was being finalised, stalking her through relatives, finding out where she was working, and turning up there to cause more trouble.
Dhankar revealed, “I started rebuilding my life after they threw me out. I stayed at my maternal home and did two or three private jobs. I faced problems there too. Before my divorce was finalised, whenever he found out through relatives that I was working somewhere, he would reach there and create trouble.”
Her mother, Santosh, who has been blind since birth, heard her daughter’s victory on television.
She applauded her daughter’s courage, explaining, “My daughter was the topper from class one to class ten. But our financial condition wasn’t good, so we had to marry her off. When it happened, I told my husband we had to go bring her back. This gold is Sharmila’s jazba (spirit).”
In 2018, when the Haryana Roadways Employees Union went on strike, she was hired as the state’s first female bus conductor on a three-month contract. However, she was let go when the strike ended. Things did look up for her when she met Ajit Singh, a submersible pump technician from Rewari, that same year.
She said, “Relatives called me a home wrecker when I stayed at my parents’ home. I worked for eighteen days as a conductor before I lost that job too. All I asked of Ajit, when his proposal came, was that he support me and my daughters.”
It was Ajit who first encouraged her towards sports, beginning with kabaddi and then taking her to the Tula Ram Stadium to train under Paralympian coach Tek Chand.
Sharmila, in an interview with Brut India, said, “He told me, ‘You should become a player.’ I said, ‘I’m not becoming a player.’ Why are you pushing me into this at this age? Who starts playing a sport at 34?”
Sharmila was already 34 at that point. She added, though, “But he said, ‘Just try. You can do it.’”
Ajit took loans to ensure that Sharmila’s training could continue and even encouraged her daughters to enter athletics. He said, “Narak se swarag banana chahta tha main Sharmila aur betiyon ke liye. I wanted to turn hell into heaven for Sharmila and our daughters. I saw para sports on TV and started her on kabaddi, then took her to Tek Chand.”
Under the coaching of Tek Chand, who, as per Sharmila, “made sure my basics became very strong,” she won her first National Championship title in 2021 and went on to finish fourth at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games.
However, just a year before the 2026 Commonwealth Games, her father passed away, and her mother sold part of their land during a financial crisis. Her mother said, “I was born without vision, but I have raised four children and run this house. When Sharmila needed money, we sold our land.”
While her victory despite her struggles is inspiring, there is also a fairly common tendency to romanticise those difficulties so much that they become a measure of how deserving a victory is. The real takeaway from her story, however, should be to ask: which areas of society need to be improved?
Whether it’s the way victims of domestic violence are treated afterwards or the need for better organisational and institutional support for Indian para-athletes, these are the areas that should be the focus.
The goal should be to ensure that other promising talents don’t have to climb the same incredibly difficult hill just to reach the top.
We should want more talented athletes to reach the international stage and win gold for the country, but without having to struggle this much simply to get the opportunities and support they deserve.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The Indian Express, Mint, The Print
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