InDepth | Good, Not Good Enough: India's Asian Games Report Card

The final numbers tell a story of their own: 85 medals, comprising 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze, enough to place India fourth in Asia. Yet, the significance of that haul cannot be judged in isolation, because three years ago India raised the bar at Hangzhou with a record 107 medals, including 28 gold, turning what had once seemed an ambitious target into a new standard for Indian sport.

Aichi-Nagoya, therefore, is not simply a story of 22 fewer medals; it is a measure of how much India’s sporting performance can fluctuate when the champions who carried the previous campaign are no longer able to do the same.

The fall from 107 medals to 85 is significant, but the decline in gold is even more revealing: of the 28 gold medals India won in Hangzhou, only eight were successfully defended in Aichi-Nagoya. The difference exposes a question that sits beneath the final tally: how much depth does India really have when its established champions are unavailable, injured or unable to reproduce their previous performances?

Lack of Depth

The reasons for the decline are not difficult to identify. The absence of established performers, defending champions losing their titles and a succession of injuries all affected India’s campaign, but their combined effect also exposed how vulnerable the medal tally remains when too much depends on a relatively small group of proven athletes.

Neeraj Chopra, India’s two-time Asian Games champion in men’s javelin, missed the Games because of injury, removing one of the country’s strongest gold-medal prospects. Women’s 100m hurdler Jyothi Yarraji and long jumper Praveen Chithravel arrived in Nagoya after being cleared to compete despite fitness concerns, only to withdraw from their respective events because of injuries, while a hamstring injury forced 400m hurdler Yashas Palaksha to pull out midway through his heat.

The athletes themselves cannot be blamed for injuries, which are an unavoidable part of elite sport, but the decision-making around selection and clearance deserves scrutiny when athletes carrying fitness concerns are being considered for a major multi-sport event. If the purpose of a selection process is to assemble the strongest possible contingent, federations must be able to explain the criteria used to determine whether an athlete is fit enough to compete and whether taking that athlete ultimately serves the team’s medal prospects.

There is another question that needs to be part of this conversation: what return should India expect from the substantial public investment being made in elite sport?

Official figures show that the Union government spent Rs 800.70 crore on India’s Asian Games preparations over the three-year cycle (from November 2023 to August 2026), of which Rs 702.86 crore came through the Annual Calendar for Training and Competitions and another Rs 97.84 crore was spent under the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS).

International competition exposure accounted for the largest share at Rs 251.4 crore, followed by Rs 118.3 crore on domestic training, Rs 40 crore on overseas training, Rs 89 crore on equipment and Rs 86 crore on foreign coaches and support staff, while the remaining Rs 118 crore covered expenses including Indian experts, championships and competitions in India, grassroots initiatives and coach development.

The spending was accompanied by a sizeable athlete-support programme, with 427 athletes covered by the government’s various schemes and programmes participating in the Asian Games. The group included 77 athletes from the TOPS Core Group, 78 from TOPS Development, 48 from the Target Asian Games Group, 65 Khelo India Athletes, 25 from National Centres of Excellence and 134 athletes from National Coaching Camps.

Money Down the Drain

Such investment cannot guarantee medals, because even the best-prepared athlete can lose to a better opponent on the day, but an investment of this scale should produce more than individual opportunities to win. Over time, it should help build a sporting ecosystem with enough depth to absorb injuries, replace established champions and maintain competitive standards across successive generations.

Aichi-Nagoya gives reason to examine whether that depth is developing quickly enough. While 137 of India’s 501 athletes across 16 disciplines returned without a medal and another 201 athletes across 22 disciplines collectively accounted for only six bronze medals. These figures do not, on their own, establish that the money was poorly spent, but they do raise a legitimate question about how effectively investment is being converted into competitive depth and sustained international performance.

The discipline-wise spending figures add another layer to that discussion.

Badminton received Rs 49.62 crore during the Asian Games preparation cycle, yet India’s return was far below what its leading players had suggested was possible. Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, the defending men’s doubles champions, were knocked out in the opening round, while PV Sindhu attributed her disappointing exit to a gruelling schedule that required her to play three singles matches within 24 hours. Lakshya Sen suffered a similar fate, failing to progress beyond the second round.

Athletics received Rs 54.65 crore, but India’s biggest medal-producing sport at Hangzhou could not reproduce its previous performance, with its gold-medal haul falling from six to one. Tajinderpal Singh Toor, chasing a hat-trick of Asian Games gold medals in men’s shot put, had to settle for silver; Avinash Sable, who won the men’s 3000m steeplechase in Hangzhou, finished fourth in Aichi-Nagoya; and Parul Chaudhary slipped from gold in the women’s 5000m to bronze. Individual compound archery also produced new champions instead of a repeat of the Hangzhou results.

Shooting received an even larger allocation of Rs 79.8 crore, but its medal haul followed the same downward trajectory, falling from 22 medals, including seven gold, in Hangzhou to 15 medals and three gold in Aichi-Nagoya. The women’s pistol and men’s rifle teams were among the most notable casualties, both failing to retain their gold medals.

Tennis, which received Rs 22.4 crore, failed to produce a single medal for the first time since 1982, while table tennis, with Rs 25.3 crore allocated to it, returned with only one bronze.

The point is not to put a price on a medal, because sport does not offer such a simple equation. The more pertinent question is whether this level of public investment is translating into the competitive depth, international consistency and succession planning that should eventually produce more athletes capable of reaching the podium. Aichi-Nagoya suggests that the next phase of India’s sporting programme cannot focus only on spending more; it must also focus on spending better and creating enough depth to ensure that one injury, one early exit or one athlete falling short of their previous form does not leave an entire discipline without a realistic gold-medal contender.

Slow off the Blocks

The early stages of the Games exposed that weakness starkly. After nine days, India had only four gold medals. The campaign then changed course. India moved another gear in the second half of the Games and the tally rose from four gold after nine days to 21 by the end of the competition. One of the most encouraging developments came from the performance of India’s women athletes, who won 11 gold medals compared with seven for men, while three came in mixed events.

That brings the discussion back to the sports ministry’s approach to selecting the Indian contingent. The ministry introduced stricter selection criteria last year, with the stated aim of ensuring that athletes chosen for multi-sport events had a realistic chance of winning medals. The policy placed greater emphasis on recent international performances and prescribed benchmarks for individual athletes and teams.

Such benchmarks can identify athletes who are competing at the required level, but they cannot, by themselves, create the depth required to sustain success. India needs a larger group of athletes capable of competing at that standard year after year.

China has spent decades building strength across disciplines and generations. Its Aichi-Nagoya haul of 169 gold medals out of 341 overall was on an entirely different scale from India’s 21 gold. If that depth remains intact, China will enter the 2030 Asian Games in Doha with every chance of extending its dominance further.

India cannot bridge a gap of that size overnight. Nor does China’s extraordinary tally make India’s campaign a failure in itself.

India wants to host the Commonwealth Games in 2030 and has ambitions of hosting the Olympics in 2036. Both objectives demand more than stadiums, training centres and other world-class infrastructure. They require an ecosystem capable of producing athletes who can compete for medals across successive generations.

A successful sporting system cannot depend on a handful of exceptional athletes emerging at the right time. It has to produce replacements before they are needed. It has to allow a young athlete to develop through sustained international competition rather than expecting them to inherit a champion’s mantle at their first major Games.

Lost Opportunity

How did India’s medal prospects change so sharply between Hangzhou and Aichi-Nagoya? How many of the defending champions could realistically have been expected to repeat their performances? Why did the campaign take nine days to gather momentum? How quickly can emerging athletes be developed into champions capable of stepping forward when the next cycle arrives?

The answers matter more than the difference between 107 and 85.

Hangzhou was a landmark campaign because several parts of India’s sporting system came together at once: established champions delivered, new athletes emerged and multiple disciplines produced medals in unprecedented numbers. Aichi-Nagoya showed what happens when some of those pillars weaken.

India needs a sporting system in which one exceptional champion can be replaced by another without the medal tally falling with them, where a missed Games does not become a lost opportunity and where the next generation is ready before the previous one has to step aside.

The gold will not win itself.

Aakash Biswas is Associate Editor-Sports, Outlook