How Can India Build Champions With Sports Science?

Every few years, India finds a new champion. A weightlifter from Manipur, a badminton player from Hyderabad, and a javelin thrower from Haryana. The whole country celebrates for a few days, and then waits, sometimes for a decade, for the next one.

And now, even the Government of India says we can't wait anymore.

At the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, which ended on 4 October, India came home with 85 medals: 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze. That's our second-best Games ever.

Kumkum Mohod won archery gold twice, once on her own and once with Ankita Bhakat and Kirti Sharma. Lovlina Borgohain, Parveen Hooda and Ankush Panghal made India the top boxing nation of the Games. Neeru Dhanda became the first Indian woman to win Asian Games trap gold, with an Asian record. Suruchi Singh and Kamaljeet Sahlot won the mixed air pistol with an Asian record. Pranavi Urs won golf. Our women's 4x400 m relay team won gold, and our cricket, kabaddi and hockey teams brought home gold too.

Now read that list again. Almost every name on it has the same backstory: a family that sacrificed, a coach who believed early, an athlete who found a way. They're extraordinary. And that's exactly the problem the government now wants to fix.

01What the government proposed

On 15 October, our Sports Minister, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, met the heads of India's national sports federations to review the Games. The message that came out of that room wasn't about the medals we won. It was a question.

"How long will Mirabai Chanu alone keep winning medals for us? We need to produce 10 more Mirabai Chanus."DR MANSUKH MANDAVIYA · PIB, 15 OCT 2026

That one line is the whole story of Indian sports. And this time it comes with a plan: an ask, serious money, and a deadline.

The ask

The Sports Ministry asked every federation for three things: more sports scientists, psychologists and mental trainers, more competitions for athletes, and an honest look at the gaps in performance. The ministry put it simply: finding talent is only half the job. The other half is giving those athletes the right training and support.

The money

And this time the ask comes with serious money. On 31 July 2026, the Union Cabinet approved a revamped Khelo India Scheme plus bigger support for national sports federations: ₹36,441 crore over five years. That's roughly eight times the previous Khelo India scheme.

Look past the headline number and it isn't just stadiums. There's a new Emerging Khelo India Athletes category to bring far more young athletes into the system, and sports science support is written into the plan. There are feeder schools, accredited academies, more school and university leagues, and a single digital platform for athlete records, talent assessments and coaching.

The target

So what does success look like? The ministry wants India to be one of the top three countries on the medal table at the 2030 Asian Games in Doha. And at the 2030 Commonwealth Games, which we're hosting, the aim is the same: a top-three finish among all the nations taking part. And before either of those, there's the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

Those are big goals. So how far are we from them right now?

02Where India stands

At the Paris Olympics, a country of 1.4 billion people won zero gold medals.

Aichi-Nagoya was a much better Games for us. But put our 21 golds next to everyone else's. China won 169. Japan won 83. South Korea, a country with fewer people than Karnataka, won 39.

Medals per person

Now divide those golds by population. This is the chart that should keep us up at night.

That's the problem in one picture. We have more people than any country on earth, yet per person we win almost nothing. And if we want to be one of the top three countries in Doha, we have to beat South Korea's 39 golds. That means nearly doubling our 21 in just four years.

Talent is not the problem

If India lacked talent, the line below would be flat. It isn't.

Yes, we win more golds than we did in 1998. But look at 2023 and 2026: 28 golds, then 21. We didn't get worse. A few of our stars just weren't on the podium this time. When a handful of people carry a country's medal count, every injury or retirement shows up in the chart.

03How can we change it?

So how do you go from a few lucky champions to a steady stream of them? You stop waiting for talent to find its own way, and you start measuring it, early, for everyone.

The missing middle

Think of Indian sports as a pyramid. At the bottom, millions of kids play. At the top, a few hundred elite athletes train in national camps with physios, analysts and foreign coaches. They're measured every day.

The trouble is the middle: the many thousands of serious young athletes in academies and district centres. That's where our next champions are right now, and that's where almost nothing gets measured.

Walk into a good academy in Bengaluru or Hyderabad and you'll see dedicated coaches running sessions for 30 or 40 players at once. Ask a coach how a 14-year-old has improved since March, and you'll get an honest, experienced answer, all from memory. No match records, no numbers, no trend line.

That's not the coach's fault. You can't watch 40 players and remember every rally. But it means we judge our future champions by gut feel, right at the age when small fixes make the biggest difference. That's exactly the gap the ministry asked federations to be honest about.

The people sports need

Here's the part we rarely say out loud: Indian sports need technical people. Engineers, data scientists, biomechanists, physiologists. People who can look at a smash, a sprint start or a bowling action and tell you exactly why it works, and what would make it better.

Every top sporting country already has them sitting next to the coach. In India, most of that talent goes into software and finance, not sports. If we want to understand our games at a deeper level, we have to bring those minds in. And for the first time, the government is putting money on the table to pay for exactly that kind of support.

04Why the moment is now

For years, the excuse was simple: sports science is expensive, so only the elite get it. That excuse just ran out. For the first time, the stars have lined up.

The technology is finally here. A few years ago, breaking down an athlete's movement meant a lab, sensors and a team of specialists. Today, AI can watch ordinary match video and see what a coach's eye can't: how fast a player moves, how their body is positioned on every shot, where the ball or shuttle goes, and how all of it changes over months. Computer vision and machine learning have made that kind of analysis cheap enough to reach a district academy, not just a national camp.

The government is all in. It has asked for sports scientists, an honest assessment of performance gaps and proper talent assessment, and it has put ₹36,441 crore and a 2030 deadline behind that ask.

And the talent has never been in doubt. A generation of Indian athletes has already shown the world what we can do without any of it.

So here's the real opportunity: give every coach a second pair of eyes, powered by AI, and bring engineers and data scientists into Indian sports to build it. Put the government's resources behind that, and the next Mirabai Chanu doesn't have to be found by luck. She can be spotted, measured and trained years earlier.

And here's the good news to end on. As you read this, India's para athletes are competing at the Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya, aiming for around 100 medals. At the last edition in Hangzhou, they won more medals than India's Asian Games team did. Every one of them is proof that Indian talent shows up when it gets a fair chance.

The talent was never the question. With AI and the government finally backing sports science, the moment to measure it, and grow it, has arrived.