India's medal profile at multi-sport events is skewed towards team and non-Olympic disciplines. Analyse the structural reasons and suggest reforms to build excellence in individual sports.

At the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, India finished fourth with 85 medals and 21 golds [1]. Six of those golds came from double wins in cricket, hockey and kabaddi [2][3][4], and kabaddi is not an Olympic sport. This skew comes from how India's sporting system is built. It does not mean India lacks talent.

Structural reasons

• Medal arithmetic: a team event gives only one gold, however many players it has. Swimming, gymnastics, fencing and cycling have many separate events, so they decide medal tables. China's lead rests on these sports, and India barely competes in them.
• Funding for athletes who are already winning: TOPS supports only 51 Core athletes [5]. It mostly backs sports where India already reaches the podium, such as archery, boxing and wrestling. It does not create new contenders.
• Gaps in the pipeline: individual sports like swimming and gymnastics need early specialisation, pools and certified coaches from childhood. Few districts have these facilities.
• Weak sports science: the Sports Minister has said sports science plays a vital role in enhancing the medal tally [6]. Biomechanics, recovery and nutrition support still reaches only a small elite group.
• Social and market pull: sponsorship and media attention go mostly to cricket. Academic pressure also pushes children away from sports that take years to pay off.
• Weak governance: federations do not publish medal targets for each sport, so nobody is answerable when a sport falls short.

Reforms

• Talent pipeline: point KIRTI talent identification towards medal-rich individual sports. This fits its target of making India a top-10 sporting nation by 2036 [7].
• Ring-fenced funding: Khelo India's expanded phase has a combined outlay of ₹36,441 crore for 2026-31 [5]. A fixed share should go to aquatics, gymnastics and athletics, linked to outcome-based budgeting.
• Sports science: expand the National Centre for Sports Science and Research, recruit foreign coaches, and link sports-science centres to universities.
• Accountability: the CAG audit of the 2010 Commonwealth Games exposed cost overruns and poor planning [8]. A similar independent performance audit of TOPS and the federations would check whether money produced results.
• Schools and women's sport: require school sport leagues, and extend ASMITA-style women's leagues to individual sports.

India's record in team sports proves that it can win when it invests steadily. The next step is to give individual Olympic sports the same long-term support through talent identification, sports science and clear accountability. Doing so would bring India closer to its 2036 and 2047 goals and strengthen any Olympic hosting bid.