An Army jawan has set a new Asian record in the men’s 5 km race walk at the 24th National Junior (U20) Athletics Federation Competition 2026, being held at Tumkur in Karnataka, making him the first Asian athlete ever to break the 19-minute barrier in this category.Havildar Nitin Gupta of the Army Sports Institute, Pune, clocked an impressive 18:54 minutes at the event, organised by the Athletics Federation of India, the apex body for running and managing athletics in the country.“Raising the bar yet again, Hav Nitin Gupta books his place for the U-20 Asian Championship and World Athletics Championships,” the Indian Army said. Bagging the gold medal, he broke his own earlier record in the process.Hailing from Uttar Pradesh, he had won a silver medal for India at the 2025 U18 Asian Athletics Championships in the 5 km race walk, clocking 20:21.51 minutes. He was recruited into the Army as a sportsperson.Numerous Army sportspersons have made the mark at the international level and setting new precedents. Earlier this month, the Indian Army’s’ first woman canoeist, Havildar Megha Pradeep, clinched India’s first-ever international gold medal in canoeing at the 2026 Canoe Sprint Asian Games Test Event in Japan.Also in April, Havildar Sawan Barwal, a 28-year-old Army athlete and long-distance runner from Himachal Pradesh broke a 48-year old national record in marathon at the NN Marathon in Rotterdam.Recently recruited women boxers from the Army also punched their way to the top at the Asian Elite Boxing Championship–2026, in Mongolia in April, clinching two gold medals and a silver medal.The Army trains specially selected sportspersons at the Army Sports Institute (ASI) which is run in collaboration with the Sports Authority of India under the Army’s Mission Olympics programme.Several disciplines such as shooting, archery, wrestling, rowing, fencing, and weightlifting have been identified for them. They are trained at the Army Sports Institute (ASI), Pune, a premier training establishment, which.The ASI was established in July 2001 as a multi-disciplinary institute to identify and nurture the vast talent of sportspersons within the Armed Forces Army and recruit potential sportspersons from across the country.