Govt looks beyond traditional sports to improve India’s Olympic medal count

NEW DELHI: India’s underwhelming show at the Paris Olympics, where the country’s athletes could only account for six medals without a single gold, has prompted the authorities to look beyond traditional sports such as shooting, wrestling, badminton and boxing.
The administrators have realised that the time has come to look beyond the usual and shift the focus entirely to developing those sports in which a medal for India was hitherto unheard of.
The govt had high hopes of a double-digit medal finish at the Paris Olympics but not even matching the Tokyo Games count of seven medals – javelin throw champion Neeraj Chopra had even won a gold – has made the sports ministry look at different options.
The ministry’s big push will come in swimming, fencing, cycling, judo, rowing and table tennis. It’s been understood that the ministry will look to evolve these sports as strong medal-winning disciplines for India, earmarking most of the funding for them and developing excellence centres for them. The development will start right from building a strong grassroots level programme and academies to promote the talent.
The ministry’s logic is simple: there are a bucketful of medals on offer in the above-mentioned six events at the Games and if India manages to win a couple in each in all these sports, apart from a good show in its traditional stronghold disciplines, the country could achieve its target of 20+ medals at the Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032.
The idea is that if India wishes to host the future Olympics in 2036 – for which it has already started efforts to secure the rights – the country must aim to finish among the top-10 at home.
According to officials, it will take 8-10 years to groom athletes in these disciplines to achieve podium success at the Olympics. For example, China won maximum medals from swimming (including diving), shooting, table tennis, gymnastics and boxing at the Rio, Tokyo and Paris Olympics. Similarly, the United States won a maximum of its medals from swimming, gymnastics and road racing events.