Podium to playground: How big medals fuelled excellence in javelin, shooting, badminton

At just 12, Misti Karmakar’s days began before dawn. By 3.30 am, she was on her bike, pedalling 4 km through the silent streets of West Bengal’s Malda, a javelin in tow, to write her story in the morning sky.

Raising an athlete daughter was a struggle for Sanjay Karmakar, a hawker at the Malda railway station. On a good day, he would earn Rs 500; just enough to feed the family and keep hope flickering. But when it came to Misti’s future, there would be no compromise.

“She comes from a very modest background but is rich in talent,” says Misti’s coach Asit Pal. A former 400m runner, Pal spotted Misti during the pandemic lockdown and convinced Sanjay to let him coach his daughter free of cost. “And I made him a promise — to make Misti an ‘India’ athlete,” Pal says. “Like Neeraj Chopra.”

On the face of it, this is a typical Indian sport story. But Misti, now 16, has emerged as one of the faces of a storm brewing in Indian sport.

An analysis by The Indian Express of participation trends since 2019 in some of the major sports revealed that when champions rise, a wave unfurls. There has been a multifold spike in the participation numbers — driven by women athletes — from 2019 to 2025, noticeably in disciplines where Indians have emerged as world beaters.

The true impact of India’s Olympic and World Championship medals is seen beyond the podium, across the country’s sprawling geography. From a badminton dream nurtured inside a no-frills academy to a budding javelin thrower from the atolls of Lakshadweep to a shooting prodigy from a chemical cluster in Gujarat.

The growth is most visible in the air rifle and air pistol events, where India has amassed Olympic, World Championships and World Cup medals — from 3,825 air pistol competitors at the National Championships in 2019 to 6,703 in 2024; and in air rifle, up from 2,817 in 2019 to 4,835 in 2024.

Inspired by Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty’s pathbreaking results, India’s premier junior ranking badminton tournament, the Krishna Khaitan Memorial, has witnessed a 100% increase in the U-19 men’s doubles; from 104 in 2012 to 208 in 2022. Similarly, at the Rajasthan State Ranking tournament, the entries went up from 517 in 2022 to 893 last year, a 70% increase.

Talking of how big medals boost participation numbers, Lalit Bhanot, the chairman of the Athletics Federation of India’s Planning Commission, gives the example of javelin. Kashinath Naik’s bronze medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, he told The Indian Express, showed “there was javelin talent in India… (Neeraj) Chopra, of course, really boosted the popularity of javelin by becoming the Olympic gold medallist and that can be seen in the increasing number of athletes who throw over 80 metres.”

In men’s javelin, 80 m is considered an elite performance threshold. In 2023, two years after Chopra’s Olympic gold, India had six throwers who crossed that mark – the same as Finland, seen as the event’s powerhouse. At September’s World Championships, India had four javelin throwers, more than any other country.

The growth in numbers has been driven by the increased participation of women athletes.

Two years ago, a research by The Indian Express of India’s Asian Games contingent revealed that the female-male percentage ratio among the medal winners was 43:57. It pointed to a shrinking gender gap when it comes to sporting success. Two decades ago, the ratio was approximately 36:64 and in the 2018 edition, it stood at roughly 40:60.

This trend is visible at the national level, too.

From 2019 to 2024, the participation of women in junior national javelin championships skyrocketed from 31 to 137, a staggering 125% spike. Among the seniors, women’s javelin throw has recorded a 70% increase in participation at the inter-state tournament, while the men’s numbers remained stable.

While women’s participation in shooting is still almost 46% less than men, it is rapidly catching up and growing faster in most events. This is evident from the 111% rise in 10 m air pistol — from 1,033 in 2019 to 2,181 last year — and almost 90% increase in 10 m air rifle, from 1,075 in 2019 to 2,038 in 2024.

In weightlifting, too, there has been an increase in women’s numbers across all categories. “My observation is women are more disciplined and driven,” says national weightlifting coach Vijay Sharma, who has been in Mirabai Chanu’s corner for the last decade. “When you have more to prove and better will-power, the chances of you succeeding increase automatically.”

The surge in women’s participation is apparent even beyond the disciplines identified by the sports ministry as a high priority. For instance, according to the All India Football Federation, the number of women players has grown from 8,683 during 2016 to 2020 to 37,829 from 2022 to 2025. The launch of a women’s league in 2016, the emergence of players such as Manisha Kalyan, the first Indian to have played in the UEFA Champions League for women, and occasional eye-catching results, leading to the national team qualifying for the 2026 Asian Cup — first time in 23 years — are seen as the reasons for this surge.

The analysis also presented some red flags.

In archery, for instance, the numbers in senior men’s participation at the national championship have been declining year-on-year, and the spread of the sport isn’t as wide as athletics, badminton or shooting — 65% of the archers are from half-a-dozen states in western and northern India.

The bigger worry, however, is in wrestling, the only sport where India has won a medal in each of the last five Olympics. The sport, thrown into turmoil following the allegations of sexual harassment against its former president, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, has witnessed a steep fall in participation numbers at the National Championships. In men’s freestyle, for instance, there were 284 entries at the 2019 National Championships. That number fell to 190 in 2023, when the protests against Brij Bhushan began, and slumped further to 136 last year. Similarly, in women’s wrestling, the entries fell from 234 in 2019 to 94 in 2023 and a marginal increase of 124 in 2024. In Greco-Roman style, too, the numbers dropped from 264 in 2019 to 133 in 2024.

A Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) official said this happened because of “internal problems”. At the National Championships earlier this month in Ahmedabad, the total number of participants in men’s freestyle, Greco-Roman and women’s freestyle categories were ‘approximately 750’ — the same as pre-Covid and pre-protests years.

The federation official says, “We had two National Championships in the aftermath of the protests, one held by the WFI, which wasn’t recognised by the government, and another by the ad-hoc body which the Indian Olympic Association formed. Because of that, the participation numbers fell sharply. This year, we were back to normal since most of our internal issues are sorted.”