Reality check at Nagoya

India needs a more focused approach in sports

India’s performance at the recently concluded Asian Games at Nagoya, Japan, was worryingly underwhelming, both by its own standards and when measured against its Asian peers. With 85 medals, India came in fourth, thanks to a flurry of medals in the last few days. The Indian women’s hockey team offered a triumph by beating China to win gold after 44 years, handing India a rare double with the men winning gold by prevailing over Malaysia. Teenager Kumkum Mohod’s individual recurve gold — making her the first Indian to do so— added to the lustre. But Nagoya’s total medal haul was considerably lower than the 107 India won in the previous edition of the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.  In sports where India has a strong advantage such as badminton, India failed to win an individual medal for the first time in 12 years. Ahead of the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, the outlook does not appear to be encouraging. 

The obvious message that would be drawn from this overall performance is that the state does not spend enough on developing its sporting talent. After all, China, which won a whopping 341 medals — 169 of them gold — has long had a well funded and formidably organised programme to nurture its sporting talent. That  consistently pays dividends in terms of medal tallies in all major multi-sport events, including the Olympics. In the summer Olympics of 2024, for instance, China came second in the medal tally with 91 gongs.  As an analysis in The Indian Express showed, the Indian programme has not yielded quite the same levels of success. Ahead of this edition of the Asian Games, for instance, the government spent almost ₹98 crore on the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS). This scheme, started in 2014, focuses on elite athletes and offers intensive customised training and systematic exposure to competition. But the analysis found that only roughly two per cent of the TOPS spending translated into gold medals. Indeed, the recurve gold was not an outcome of the scheme’s interventions.  The ₹98 crore spending is considerably higher than the ₹24.21 crore spent in 2023. The question, then, is not whether India lacks sporting talent but whether the TOPS scheme is identifying the right talent to develop. This is, admittedly, not an easy task and often a question of sheer luck. 

That said, there is some long-term hope to be drawn from the stories of Indian sportspersons who have overcome adverse economic conditions to compete in the international arena. R Vithya Ramraj’s is a heart-warming story of a truck driver’s daughter who won multiple medals, including the women’s relay gold. Boxing gold medalist and Olympic bronze medalist Lovlina Borgohain, who came from a family of poor agriculturalists, is another example. Their ability to develop has much to do with significant improvements in access to sporting and training infrastructure compared with the past. The Khelo India Centres that have opened across the country are a case in point. But these are still exceptions rather than standard practice. As the Nagoya reality check shows, India needs to enable more of its people, especially among the poorest, to access sporting facilities. Only then can it discover the critical mass of talent that can win medals at the highest level, consistently.