The Stairs to the Podium: India's Sporting Rise under PM Modi
As PreferredSource In the summer of 1934, six Indians boarded a ship for London. They were headed to the second edition of what was then called the British Empire Games, the tournament the world now knows as the Commonwealth Games. When the Games ended, India…
They were headed to the second edition of what was then called the British Empire Games, the tournament the world now knows as the Commonwealth Games. When the Games ended, India had exactly one medal to show for the journey: a bronze, won by.
A contingent of 122 athletes competed across ten sports and came home with 39 medals; 13 gold, 17 silver, and 9 bronze! And, eight of those thirteen golds were won by women.
What Happened
The distance between those two contingents, six athletes and one bronze, versus a nation now expecting to place among the top handful of Commonwealth countries, is the real story of Indian sport. It was written slowly, by athletes who trained day and.
As PreferredSource In the summer of 1934, six Indians boarded a ship for London.
Ninety-two years later, Commonwealth Games, Glasgow, 2026, a very different India walked out.
After the lone 1934 bronze, the medals came slowly.
Key Details
But, it is impossible to tell the new India’s story, without placing Prime Minister Narendra Modi close to its centre. Who, more than any leader before him, he chose to treat sport as a national priority rather than an afterthought.
It took until 1958, in Cardiff, for India to win its first Commonwealth gold and it was won by a man whose life had begun in tragedy.
As a teenager training in Imphal, her childhood coach has recalled, there were days Mirabai did not have even ₹10 for the bus fare home.
In April 2021, three months before the Tokyo Olympics, Mirabai needed to reach a specialist strength-and-conditioning coach in the United States.
Why It Matters
By providing support to athletes who had never been funded, building the schemes that changed their odds, and lending the prestige of his office to a boxer or a javelin thrower the way earlier prime ministers reserved for statesmen. For a long.
The entire trip from treatment, to a sparring partner, boarding, lodging, travel was budgeted at around ₹70 lakh.
In 2014, Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi launched TOPS (The Target Olympic Podium Scheme).
What Reports Say
Coverage of the story so far points to:
TOPS helped javelin thrower Kishore Jena, when he needed 78 days of training in Australia before Paris 2024.
Khelo India, launched in 2018, works at the other end of the pipeline.
Continued reporting by Deccan Chronicle as more details emerge
