The past few weeks have made it difficult to go a day without walking into, or scrolling past, a conversation about sports. From the New York Knicks ending a 53-year wait for an NBA championship and Jannik Sinner successfully defending the Wimbledon title to Cape Verde's extraordinary run to the FIFA World Cup quarterfinals and the much-anticipated international debut of 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the sports fans have little reason to change the channel. For Indian sports fans, however, those conversations inevitably turn to the country's own place on the global sporting stage. An estimated 678 million Indians follow sport, making India one of the world's largest sports audiences. But for a country with a sports audience larger than the population of most nations, its representation across many of the world's biggest sporting competitions remains disproportionately low.
That is the gap India hopes to narrow as it builds its case to host the 2036 Olympic Games. The momentum behind that ambition has gathered pace in recent weeks. Last week, Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya announced plans to host 29 international events over the next two years, taking the total number of global competitions staged by India between 2025 and 2028 to 65, as it seeks to demonstrate its capacity to organise events on the scale of the Olympics. Days later, Prime Minister Modi and his Australian counterpart Albanese signed the India-Australia Roadmap for Sports Collaboration, covering coaching, physical education, high-performance centres and research, with Australia formally backing India's bid.
Building physical literacy before building athletes
As India builds its case, Balachandran Manikkath, Director at the Rohan Bopanna Tennis Academy says the country's sporting ecosystem must evolve alongside its infrastructure. "The solution is to start from the grassroots. We have to build infrastructure across the country, not just in major cities but in rural areas and small towns. To prepare for the Olympic bid, we have to make sport accessible to millions of children and train Physical Education (PE) teachers in physical literacy,” he says. The National Sports Policy 2025 incorporates many of those ideas, calling for certified PE teachers in every school, dual-career pathways for student-athletes and emphasis on grassroots talent identification.
Schools as the starting line
For countries that consistently produce Olympians, education and sport do not exist in separate arenas. The United States, Australia, Japan and several European countries integrate sport into their education systems, with schools serving as the first stage in a structured pathway that extends to universities and elite competition. The objective is to identify talent early, provide consistent competition and ensure athletes continue developing through their school years, an approach also reflected in the National Education Policy 2020. "Schools have to start physical literacy programmes from Class 1. Children should first develop fundamental movement skills. By the age of seven or eight, they should be introduced to different sports like football, basketball, tennis, badminton, running, jumping and throwing. That's when you begin to understand where a child's strengths lie," he added.
Participation is not athlete development
Building that system, however, involves more than creating opportunities to play sports. Encouraging participation is important, but participation alone does not produce elite athletes. That requires Quality Physical Education (QPE), where children first develop physical literacy and the movement skills that underpin every sport. "There is no sporting excellence without physical literacy embedded in Quality Physical Education (QPE). If you plan to build a 100-storey building, the first and most important element is a foundation strong enough to hold it. Physical literacy is the movement foundation on which Olympic medallists are built," says Shafeeq Valiyakath, retired Director of Physical Education.
Beyond talent identification
Physical literacy and school sport lay the foundation. Converting that foundation into international success requires an ecosystem that supports athletes throughout their development. According to Pradeep CS, Additional Director at the Directorate of Sports and Youth Affairs, Government of Kerala, India's sporting ambitions will ultimately depend on how effectively it identifies and develops talent. "There may be another Tendulkar or Dhoni, or equally gifted athletes in other sports. The key is having organised systems that can identify talent early and then support it with the right coaching, training and opportunities to compete. That also means investing in infrastructure, improving access to quality facilities, strengthening nutrition and sports science," he said.
Supporting athletes beyond the podium
Even when talent is identified and trained, building an athlete requires sustained support through losses, injuries and periods of poor form. Schools, sports institutions and families all have a role in ensuring young athletes stay on course. Dr Gayathry Govindaraj, an international athletics medallist says, "Winning and losing are both part of sport. Athletes need support through setbacks as much as they do through success. At the same time, there's also a perception that if you're serious about sport, you can't be serious about studies. Until these things change, we'll continue to lose talented athletes." Talent may belong to the athlete, but success and growth belong to the system.
In In Search of an Olympic Legacy: The Story of India's Failed Olympic Bid, historian Kausik Bandyopadhyay wrote that India's failed bid for the 1992 Olympic Games left "no viable legacy" on which future Olympic ambitions could be built. The 2036 bid comes with a far clearer understanding that hosting the Games alone will not be enough to create a legacy. Four decades later, the conversation has shifted from hosting the Olympics to building Olympians.
