As we enter a pared-down 2026 Commonwealth Games, ESPN takes a look at five top medal prospects for India at Glasgow:
Neeraj Chopra
The name makes it self-explanatory, really.
India's greatest ever athlete is coming off a poor 2025 (even if he did hit the 90m mark for the first time) and will want to banish memories of his eighth-place finish at the '25 World Championships.
He's already won CWG gold before in 2018 but skipped 2022 due to an injury. It won't be easy, at all, this time, for up against him will be reigning Olympic and CWG champion Arshad Nadeem, former World champion Anderson Peters and by far the most in-form thrower of 2026, Rumesh Pathirage. The latter already beat Neeraj in the Doha leg of the Diamond League.
Neeraj finished fourth in that event, his comeback to the circuit after the Worlds last year. A best throw of 85.69m was underwhelming by his standards but also provided an indication that he's on the path back.
Mirabai Chanu
The last time she competed at a Commonwealth Games, she came out to compete after everyone else was done with their best lifts. In fact, her starting weight in the snatch, at 84 kg, was a whole eight kilograms better than the next best lift. In the clean and jerk section, her finishing weight (113kg) was 16kg better than the next best. Such was her utter dominance that these pages headlined her Birmingham gold: It was Mirabai vs Mirabai, and there could be only one winner.
Expect more of the same as she leads the team in a weightlifting field India will expect to dominate.
Sarvesh Kushare
The previous Indian record holder in the high jump, Tejaswin Shankar, won bronze in Birmingham. The man who took that record over this year, Sarvesh Kushare (2.31m), will be raring to improve upon that CWG bronze of Shankar's as well. In the form of his life, Kushare made his Diamond League debut in the Monaco leg earlier this month and finished a creditable third (with a best jump of 2.26m).
The worry for him here, though, is that the man who finished second (with 2.30m), Kimani Jack, will represent England at Glasgow. Just 22, the young Englishman will be keen to make a mark at his first big multi-sport event. And that's just the start, for returning to defend his CWG gold will be reigning Olympic champion Hamish Kerr. Also in the fray are Australia's Yual Reath and Jamaica's Romaine Beckford (both with a PB of 2.30m).
Jaismine Lamboria
In Birmingham, Jaismine Lamboria was a 20-year-old prodigy who did brilliantly to win bronze, but the featherweight (57kg) boxer enters the Glasgow ring as one of the favourites for gold now.
Now 24 and entering her prime, she is the reigning world champion, having won gold rather convincingly in the '25 World Championships held in Liverpool. Her dominance has extended to the newly minted World Boxing Cup too, where she's won two golds at the Astana and New Delhi legs of the tournament.
Sreeshankar Murali
On the comeback trail after a severe injury cost him a chance to compete at the Paris Olympics, Sreeshankar Murali seems to have hit a patch of sustained form. He's won every domestic competition he's entered this year, all five of them with jumps over 8m (and a best of 8.38m in late June).
That 8.38m would have won him gold in Birmingham by a mile, and he'll be keen to turn that 2022 silver into a gold medal one. Expect his main competition in Glasgow to come from two Jamaican athletes: 2019 World Champion Tajay Gayle (best of 8.37m this year, set in Jun 2026 and a massive personal best of 8.69m) and Jordan Turner (a PB of 8.22m set in Jun 2026).