What are you aiming for, she was asked, at a Delhi press meet, two days before the Indian contingent left for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Glasgow.
“Gold,” said Sharmila Dhankar, 39. “There’s no other medal I want. Gold is what I’ll go for.”
No one paid much attention. There were stars of the para-athlete world here. Dhankar was an unknown entity.
I will now admit I was in the crowd that day and found the assertion a bit preposterous.
Dhankar had yet to win a major international medal. Her six-year career involved fourth-place finishes at the CWG in Birmingham (2022) and at the Asian Para Games in Hangzhou (2023), and a fifth-place result at the World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi (2025).
“I don’t bother too much about history,” she had said, when reminded of this. “I’d rather create some of my own.” That wasn’t just what she said; it’s what she did.
On July 27, Dhankar hurled a 3kg iron ball 9.81m to earn India’s first-ever gold in para-athletics at a CWG. (She is also the first Indian woman to ever win a para-athletics medal at a CWG.)
“I told you I’d come back with gold, and here I am,” she beamed, thrusting her medal towards the camera later that day.
There’s a certain joie de vivre about Dhankar. She speaks with a smile that never leaves her face.
“I found joy so late in life that I can’t afford to lose my smile,” she says. “It’s been a long and painful journey.”
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The second of four siblings, Dhankar was born to an impoverished farmer and a visually impaired homemaker in Haryana’s Mahendragarh district.
She contracted polio at the age of two, and grew up isolated from the friendships and hours of play that can ease a harsh childhood. It was often worse than isolation. In school and at home, at social gatherings and over quiet meals, she became the butt of jokes.
“I don’t blame these people entirely,” she says. “That was how things were for people with disabilities where I grew up, and so they didn’t know any better. But it hurt. Obviously it hurt.”
She was married at 19, and things got worse. The domestic abuse she faced intensified after the birth of her two daughters, “and there were times I thought of ending it all,” she says. “I hated my life. There was no purpose, just struggle, and nothing to look forward to. I lived in constant fear, and I didn’t have the courage to speak out.”
Seven years in, as the abuse escalated, she left and returned home.
Two years later she met a man of limited means, a mechanic named Ajit Singh, and a new family formed. He treated her and her daughters with love. “He motivated me to do something with my life,” Dhankar says.
Encouraged by him, she enrolled at the Rao Tularam Stadium near their home in Rewari, in 2020. “Most athletes retire at 34 and here I was, looking for a fresh start,” she says, grinning.
Blessed with natural upper-body strength, Dhankar took to the shot put with ease. She trained under Tek Chand, who won a shot put bronze at the 2018 Asian Para Games.
“It was a little awkward to train with girls less than half my age, but it was soon okay. I got a lot of support from my coach and other trainees,” she says.
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A year into her “second life”, Dhankar won at the Para National Championships, setting a national record of 7.40m. She qualified for the 2022 Birmingham CWG, where she set a new national record (8.43m). At the 2025 World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi, she set another (10.03m).
By this point, a dream was taking shape, but dreams take money.
In 2023, Singh sold a house in Sonipat for ₹10 lakh. Dhankar’s mother Santosh Dhankar sold land for ₹24 lakh.
“They wanted me to excel at the 2025 Worlds, but a fifth-place finish is all I could manage. I was not happy with the results. Looking at sacrifices my family was making, I felt an overpowering sense of guilt,” Dhankar says. “It wasn’t easy to eat what I needed while the family didn’t. It is not easy to raise an athlete, without a lot of resources. It was hard. My family had to go without. That’s why my only target this time was gold.”
Back home with the promised gold, Dhankar has a new dream: She wants to help buy back the land they sold.
She has another dream too, one that may or may not come true. She wants to compete at a CWG alongside her daughters: 15-year-old Anuj, who has taken up the javelin, and 13-year-old Laxmi, training as a long-jumper.
The mother and daughters now train together at Rao Tularam Stadium. In the immediate future, the gold-medallist has her sights set on the Asian Para Games in Japan in October and the LA Paralympics in 2028.
“This sport gave me a purpose, a second birth,” Dhankar says. “I want to say to women facing domestic abuse: Don’t be scared. Take your shot, and your life might just change completely.”
