Battles are rarely lost on courage. They are lost on handovers. I learned that on a running track, long before I learned it in uniform. Four decades ago, on the last day of our inter-formation athletics championship, the final event was the men’s 4x400m relay. Our team was my regiment, all four runners were officers, which is quite unusual. We won. I remember the feeling more than the time. Four people, one baton.
Not one of us could have won it alone. India’s showing at the Asian Games in Nagoya brought that day back. We finished fourth, with 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze for 85 medals. It was our second-best Games. It was also 22 medals and seven golds below Hangzhou. Fourth place both times. Read the shape, not just the total. Silvers outnumber golds. Bronzes outnumber silvers. We are good at reaching the podium. We are less good at finishing on its top step. Think about how the Army builds an officer.
Selection first. Then training. Then a unit. Then higher responsibility, with someone watching at each stage. Nobody expects a battalion commander to appear from nowhere. The pipeline is the strategy. Now apply that to sport. Gulveer Singh took 10,000m bronze at Hangzhou. In Nagoya he won two silvers and a bronze. Antim Panghal moved from bronze to silver. Sawan Barwal won India’s first men’s marathon medal since 1982, 48 seconds from gold. They climbed. They didn’t arrive. Some of the firsts were lovely to see. Baranica Elangovan became the first Indian pole vaulter to win an Asian Games medal. Mirabai Chanu won silver in the 49kg, India’s first Asian Games weightlifting medal since 1998.
Firsts are good news. They are also a reminder of how long some sports have gone without anyone reaching the podium. The other side of the ledger is sobering. Japan’s 17-year-old Shin Ohashi swam a reported world record. China’s women won team air rifle with a world-record score, and thirteen-year-old Yu Zidi collected Games and Asian marks. In the pool relay, China’s anchor swam the fastest split in history to overturn a near-two-second deficit. These athletes come out of systems that pick them young and don’t lose them. India’s golds came mostly from teams.
Cricket, kabaddi and hockey delivered, and India’s women’s hockey side ended a 44-year wait. Teams have continuity. Individual athletes often don’t. Our shooters, who won seven golds in China, drew a blank in the individual rifle and pistol events in the first week. Los Angeles arrives on 14 July 2028. At Paris, India took six medals: one silver and five bronze. Hockey and archery quotas are already in hand. That is a head start worth protecting. What would a soldier ask first? Who owns the handover? Between school and university.
Between the district meet and the national camp. Between one Games and the next. If nobody owns it, it fails quietly. In the Army, every exercise ends with a debrief, and the debrief is honest or it is useless. Sport needs the same habit after each Games. Not a press note. A hard look at where athletes stalled, who was responsible for the next step and what changes before the next cycle. Khelo India has set up 2,800 academies. At a March 2025 review, 937 of 1,045 centres were working. The gap is 108 centres. In the Army, we’d call that a readiness report. And we’d chase it. Three things would help before 2028. Back fewer athletes, and back them completely. Reports say the elite TOPS group was cut from 179 to 94 after Paris and widened to 118 by January. The instinct is sound. Hold the line.
Qualify early wherever the Asian route allows it, as hockey has. And bet on events where India has a real edge, such as compound archery, which debuts at LA28. But the elite end is only half of it. The other half is the child nobody has found yet. For that child, India needs sports universities and schools of excellence inside the public system. Not as showpieces. As ordinary institutions, in ordinary districts, the way we built schools and hospitals. Private and corporate support has done good work, and it should continue. But the common man’s child shouldn’t depend on it. The relay taught me one more thing. When the baton is dropped, nobody blames the fastest runner. They ask who was supposed to be there to receive it. India has the runners. The baton is the system.
*Colonel M V Shashidhar (Retd) served over 36 years in the Indian Army. He is an IICA-certified Independent Director and writes on defence, strategic affairs and governance.