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Journalism of Courage
There are winds of hope blowing through the sporting ecosystem that India could end up hosting an Olympic Games in just over a decade after the government has expressed its desire to host the quadrennial event in India in 20236. Gujarat’s Ahmedabad has already been allotted the Commonwealth Games in 2030, and it is being seen as a precursor of the Olympic Games coming to India for the first time.
India’s first individual gold medallist, Abhinav Bindra, has no doubt that India will host an Olympics sooner rather than later.
“I think the Olympic Games will come to India. There is no doubt about it that the Games will come to India. It is a matter of timing on when they will eventually come. It is a good thing that we are bidding and we are going into that journey,” Bindra told journalists at a press conference in Goa on the sidelines of the FIDE World Cup final between China’s Wei Yi and Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov. Bindra was at the World Cup to make the ceremonial first move for the first game of the final.
“In the double-digit countries that are interested in hosting the Games, most bids will fail. But I think the important thing for a country like India is to use the bid—whether it will win, fantastic, but even if we don’t get it—to ensure sport must win and go forward. We have already seen signs of that happening. The National Sports Governance Act 2025 came into play in the Parliament a couple of months ago. There is a little bit more sense of purpose which we have seen all around. The attitude towards the bid, I think that is wonderful to see. I wish our big team all the very best. And of course, as an Indian athlete, I would love to see the Olympic Games come to India sooner rather than later. I am sure that they will come at some point,” said Bindra.
Bindra elaborated on what his wish for Indian sport was regardless of India getting the opportunity to host an Olympics.
“We can see that in our population the consumption of sport, whether people are enjoying sport, just watching as spectators, or actively participating in it, that number is rising. What I would like to see is that our 1.4 billion population, our playing population increases. When schools get more opportunities for children to experience sport—experience sport not to become some champion or Olympic gold medallist or whatever, but just experience sport to become healthier, to imbibe values to sport—when these opportunities increase, automatically the by-product will be that the participation in elite sport will also increase.”
So how important is it for India to be ready from a sporting point of view? India’s best medals tally at an Olympics remains seven medals, which it got at Tokyo 2020. That tally also had Neeraj Chopra’s gold, which is only the second time an Indian athlete has won an individual gold medal at the Games, with the first one being Bindra’s gold at Beijing 2008.
Bindra continued: “It’s no secret that you have to work on both aspects. There is, of course, an aspect of development in sport, and you already know that we’ve done a lot of work that’s happened in this course in the last few years to really give elite athletes a lot of support, and that is being done at a really good level.
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“But of course, we would like to see more athletes win medals, and especially if you’re hosting an Olympic Games in your own country, you would like to see your own athletes do well, because that will just take it from there. And there has to be work done. But I think I’ll give an even deeper, maybe a different way of answering the question. I think we have to use the Olympic bid and the Olympic Games as an opportunity to develop them. We don’t want the Olympic Games to be just a two-week sporting extravaganza, or the ten days or two weeks of the Paralympics as a sporting extravaganza. We really should use the Games as a catalyst for change, for developing sport, developing sport at different levels, whether it be, I talked about the school level, whether it be grassroot community sport, whether to make this country healthier, to make this country active, to really invite sport into the fabric of our society. And while, I think, being a young demographic, sport is becoming more popular, but I do believe that we need to actively work much harder to get the playing population, like your colleague just asked, to increase the playing population of this country,” said Bindra.
“I do believe that we need to actively work much harder to get the playing population, like your colleague just asked, to increase the playing population of this country. We are 1.4 billion people, how many of that 1.4 billion actually play sport? The number is actually quite little, if you really look into it. So I think the work that needs to go in to increase that participation, I think, is important. And if the Olympics can help us get there, and it must help us get there, because as I said, the Games and the Olympic Games must be used as a catalyst for development and a catalyst for sportsmanship,” Bindra added.
