For Bengaluru’s Tilottama Sen, winning a silver medal at the Asian Games Aichi-Nagoya 2026 was a moment she will remember for a long time. The 18-year-old, along with Vidarsa Vinod and Ashi Chouksey, won silver in the women’s 50m rifle 3-positions team event, marking her first medal at a continental competition. Because i had my final immediately after that, “We were excited, but we didn’t really get the time to celebrate.
The team discovered they had won silver just before Tilottama had to compete in the individual final.
I was really happy about it,” she says. Yet, there was little time to celebrate. It was great to win a medal in my debut Asian Games.
Tilottama, however, says she has learnt to approach competitions without letting pressure take over. My only goal at the Asian Games was to execute what I had learnt from my previous two international competitions and correct the mistakes I had made,” she says. For a young athlete competing on such a big stage, expectations can often feel overwhelming. “I have my own expectations, and my parents do too, but I have never taken them as pressure.
My coach told me to accept what had happened, but not hold on to it for too long. I realised that holding on to things would not let me move forward,” she says. finishing fourth in the individual final gave Tilottama plenty to reflect on While the team silver was a moment of celebration. “After my match, I sat down and spoke to my coach about what had happened. There were things I still had to work on.