What's holding
India back

India spent about ₹470 crore preparing athletes in 16 disciplines for Paris. Britain's UK Sport put roughly eight times as much into its Olympic and Paralympic programmes over the same four years, then won 65 Olympic medals. The comparison isn't exact, since the UK figure includes Paralympic sport, but the scale is.

Most of India's money also goes to athletes who are already close to a medal. That is sensible, but it means the sixteen-year-old national junior champion, who needs a coach, a physio and travel to meet better opponents, is usually on their own. The 2026-27 sports budget rose 15% and launched a ten-year Khelo India Mission, which is a real step up. Per person, it is still about the price of two cups of tea a year.

At Paris 2024, India finished 71st on the medal table with 6 medals, down from 48th and 7 in Tokyo. It also finished fourth six times. Several were decided by a shoot-off, a single kilogram or one end of archery.

Margins this small are won by sports science, nutrition, mental preparation and experience of high-pressure finals. Those are exactly the areas where Indian athletes get the least support, and where top sporting nations spend the most.

In August 2025 Parliament's standing committee on sport reported that about 45% of sanctioned posts at the Sports Authority of India were vacant, and asked for them to be filled within six months. Coaches are the people who spot talent, correct technique and keep athletes in the sport. A country short of them loses athletes it never sees.

Sports medicine and science are thinner still outside a handful of national centres. An injured junior in a small town often has nobody to tell them whether to rest, rehabilitate or quit.

Every Olympic champion starts as a child who loved to play. In India, play is squeezed out early: exams come first, physical education is often treated as optional, and nearly one school in five has no playground at all. A 2024 Lancet Global Health study found that 49.4% of Indian adults were insufficiently active in 2022, among the highest rates in the world, and projected about 60% by 2030.

A nation where most people don't play sport will always have a small pool of athletes to choose from. The pool is the problem, not the talent in it.

Nearly three in ten Indian children under five are stunted, according to the latest National Family Health Survey. That is a large improvement on earlier surveys, and still one of the highest rates in the world. Elite sport needs strength and endurance built over years; many talented children from poorer families start that journey already behind, and many athletes describe diet as their biggest daily cost.

In 2023 the world wrestling body suspended India's wrestling federation for failing to hold elections, and the sports ministry later suspended its new leadership until March 2025. In October 2024 the International Olympic Committee stopped payments to the Indian Olympic Association, except those going directly to athletes, until a long-running dispute among its officials was settled in 2025 (funding resumed).

Disputes like these cost athletes selection trials, competitions and coaching time. The National Sports Governance Act 2025 is meant to fix this with a National Sports Board that can recognise or de-recognise federations, a tribunal for disputes, and supervised elections. It will only work if athletes get a real voice inside federations, not just on paper.

In the World Anti-Doping Agency's most recent annual testing report, India had the highest positive rate of any country running more than 5,000 tests: 3.6%, against 0.2% for China and 1.1% for the USA. India's anti-doping agency says the numbers reflect stronger testing, and its partial 2025 figures are lower.

Either way, it ends careers, it puts young athletes' health at risk, and an IOC official has reportedly named it as a concern about India's bid to host the 2036 Olympics (report).

Cricket is a national joy, and its success is earned. But it absorbs 89% of everything spent on sport in India, including 81% of sponsorship. Every other sport, from athletics to wrestling to hockey, shares the remaining 11%.

The IPL's media rights alone are worth about ₹9,700 crore a year, more than twice the entire sports ministry budget. Brands follow audiences, and audiences follow what they can see. Olympic sports get attention for two weeks every four years, so sponsors rarely find their athletes in between.

Indian women have won many of the country's biggest medals, yet girls face extra barriers from the start: safety on the way to training, families who stop their sport at adolescence, and a lack of women coaches and changing rooms.

In 2023, several of India's best-known women wrestlers protested publicly, alleging sexual harassment by the then president of their federation, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who denied the allegations. A Delhi court acquitted him in August 2026, and four of the complainants have challenged the acquittal. Whatever the final verdict, the case showed how hard it is for athletes to raise complaints against the officials who control their selection.

Attitudes are changing: in a 2021 LocalCircles survey, 71% of families said they would back a child who chose a sport other than cricket as a career. The willingness is there. The pathway is not.

Between about 17 and 21, an athlete has to choose between training and studying or earning. Without a stipend, a sponsor or a secure job to fall back on, most choose the job, and India loses athletes at exactly the age they would start winning senior medals. Retired athletes with no qualifications send the same message to the next generation.