Why Does India Struggle to Win Medals in the Olympics?

As the Paris Olympics 2024 reaches its culmination, India has ended its campaign with six medals. The Indian contingent has secured about five bronze medals, a silver medal, and no gold medals.

Among the five bronze medals, three came in shooting events—with the young shooter Manu Bhaker winning two medals in the 10m air pistol women’s and mixed team with Sarabjot Singh and Swapnil Kushale winning a bronze in the 50m Rifle 3P event.

Much like the last time in Tokyo, the Indian hockey team defeated Spain to clinch the bronze medal in Paris. And this year, Aman Sehrawat, the lone wrestling medallist, won a bronze in the Men’s 57kg wrestling. Neeraj Chopra won the silver medal in the Javelin throw in Paris, and now, he is the first-ever Indian athlete to win a gold and silver medal in his track and field events.

There were a few promising displays of talents and some heartbreaks. Vinesh Phogat had reached the final in the wrestling event but was only disqualified due to a 100-gram increase in weight before the finals.

In Badminton, despite PV Sindhu crashing out of the event, Lakshya Sen’s performance against Victor Axelson (who won back-to-back gold) has raised eyeballs—and he looks like someone who can win for India at big-stage events.

Apart from these, the Paris Olympics campaign has been much of a disappointment for India. Therefore, I will reflect on why India struggles to win gold medals in Olympic events in this essay.

Historical background of India’s campaign in the Olympics

India began participating in the Olympics in the 1900s. However, between the Paris Olympics in 1900 and the Paris Olympics in 2024, India has amassed about 41 medals. This number looks shambolic. More so, only with Abhinav Bindra’s gold in the 2008 Olympics did India win its first gold medal in individual events.

Most of India’s gold medals were won in one event: hockey. India won its first gold medal in hockey in Amsterdam in 1928, then in Los Angeles in 1932, and later in Berlin in 1936, London in 1948, Helsinki in 1952, Melbourne in 1956, Tokyo in 1964, and Moscow in 1980. And since Moscow in 1980, India’s hockey secured a (bronze) medal in Tokyo in 2020.

When you compare these numbers with some individual Olympians globally, India’s performance looks even more tragic—for instance, Michael Phelps, an American Swimmer, has secured 28 medals in the Olympics, with about 23 being gold.

India is the most populous country in the world at present, and despite this, India’s performance in the Olympics is not up to the mark. In the Paris Olympics, India is currently ranked 71 among all the 82 medal-winning countries. China has about 39 gold medals and is ranked number one.

Key Reasons Why India’s Performance in the Olympics is Shambolic

The lack of sporting culture in India

India is not a sporting country. This is a hard fact. Indians do well elsewhere. They study hard, pass engineering exams, become IT professionals, and earn good salaries. But, sports, no. Why? Since childhood, everything you do is mediated through your academic excellence. “Study hard, or else you will fail in life”. “Do not distract yourself with games and sports”.

Even there is a saying in Hindi: “Kheloge Kudoge to Honge Kharab, Padhoge Likhoge to Banoge Nawab”. This means you will ruin your life if you do sports.

These statements do not merely reflect the general outlook of how Indian parents raise their children, but they also suggest a deeply structural problem. Sports do not help you become successful in life. It is often considered a “time-pass” activity without any bearing on a child’s life.

In Australia, for instance, people are running in the mornings. They are kayaking, hiking, swimming, playing rugby and handball, day in and day out. But it is a luxury to be prosperous as a society. Since India is populous, there is always significant competition in almost everything. Moreover, there is a lack of resources in society at large.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have linked poor Olympic performances with India’s high child malnourishment levels. Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund have shown in the 2008 paper that despite India’s high population levels, only a few chunks of people have access to competing in athletic events.

In India, not everyone has access to sports and is encouraged to pursue them as a career. Moreover, since childhood, no one has been encouraged to do sports. And that makes a lot of difference.

Pressures and expectations as a problem in the Olympics

In India, there is a significant expectation from those representing the country. Such expectations suggest the desire for enthusiasm among netizens to celebrate successes. These expectations tend to backfire. They add pressure on people to do well. It often causes people to not do as well with such pressures—and often leads to negative performances.

In a recent interview, Prakash Padukone, the badminton coach, blurted out his dismay towards Lakshya Sen’s loss in the bronze-medal match. He urged players to “introspect”—and not keep asking federations for more and more benefits and give dismal performances.

He said: “Maybe, you know, the players are not working hard enough. Maybe it is not enough to get a medal at the Olympics. So you (players) need to work also…” Such comments are often misplaced. But, importantly, it also suggests the significant pressures the players must endure when representing India.

When you train individuals to be better sportspersons, they will inevitably do well. It does not happen in a year or two. It takes time. For that, there should be significant support and an environment that does not demand it from them.

The levels of competition in sports in the Olympics are significantly high. And players tend to train all their lives since childhood for such performances.

However, with so much pressure on them, players often tend not to live up to the expectations. In every sporting event, there should be rigorous processes for selection—with more and more space for people to come forward and participate. And when that happens, there will be fewer expectations of medals, and medal-winning becomes a norm.

Lack of support environment for sports—except cricket

In India, no sport is taken seriously other than cricket. Everyone goes gaga over cricket. However, such a focus on cricket, barely played by over 12 major countries, significantly damages the sporting culture across other sports. Sporting federations are significantly underfunded.

For instance, Rani Rampal, a former Indian hockey team captain who scored about 134 goals in international matches, could not even afford a hockey stick.

In one of her Instagram posts, she even stated: “I wanted an escape from my life; from the electricity shortages to the mosquito buzzing in our ear when we slept, from barely having two square meals to seeing our home getting flooded when it rained.”

Such difficulties point to the structural inequalities Indians face when it comes to sporting events. Indians do not have excellent sporting structures to practice and play. All leading countries invest significantly in sporting structures.

The countries that win significantly high numbers of gold medals tend to have better facilities for training, better trainers, and significant support staff—all of them working to ensure that players are well-catered.

With so much poverty and barely any sporting support, it is difficult to expect Indians to perform well in the Olympics.

Too much politics and too little sports in India

Politics has its tentacles in Indian sports. Politics in sports refers to significant control over sporting culture, federations, and sporting access to political figures.

I do not understand how Himanta Biswa Sarma, the current Assam chief minister, is the president of the Badminton Federation of India (BFI). Politicians have swarmed into each of the sporting associations—and are causing detriment to the sports itself.

Take, for instance, the case of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the former President of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) and a politician from India’s ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), who has been accused of sexual misconduct by wrestlers.

However, despite significant protests by wrestlers in the national capital, Singh was not arrested and has since wielded authority in detrimental ways to the wrestlers who opposed him.

Vinesh Phogat is one such wrestler who accused Singh. Its detriment is seen in the things that have spiralled since. Phogat could participate in a category of 50 kgs, which she was not wholly comfortable with, rather than in 53kg bouts.

This ultimately caused a loss of a chance at the medal and a disqualification of Phogat, who had reached the finals.

The controversy, however, triggered a complex array of administrative issues in sporting events in India. It has alluded to significant challenges sportspersons face in India. There is widespread corruption, favouritism, and, above all, bad sports management by governing authorities held by politicians.

With so much politics working against them and their interests, you cannot expect Indians to win Olympic gold. It is here Abhinav Bindra’s statement makes sense: “Athletes perform and win medals despite the system and not because of it”.

Cover Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash