Why India Struggles to Support Athletes?
Every major sporting event — the Olympics, the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games, and countless individual global tournaments — forces India to confront the same question: how can a country of over a billion send such small teams, and return with so few podium finishes? The answer lies not in talent, but in the long, fragile journey a young athlete in India must endure before they are even visible to selectors.
This episode of Game Play Sport explores that journey through the story of Raziya Khan, midfielder for Odisha FC, whose earliest introduction to football was almost accidental. The sports room in her school was usually locked. She and the other girls used a bottle filled with stones as a football — a reminder of how little access they truly had.
Her real entry into sport came when Teach For India fellows began introducing football to girls in her school. For many of them, including Raziya, this was the first time the game felt within reach. But that opening led into a demanding, often isolating journey. She travelled more than two hours every day to get to practice. She studied late into the night because her evenings belonged to football. She navigated fatigue, self-doubt, and the unspoken pressure to treat sport as a hobby rather than a possibility.
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Raziya’s story echoes across India — in both team sports and individual disciplines. The young runner who trains without a proper track. The aspiring wrestler who takes crowded buses to reach a mat. The badminton player waiting hours for a free court. The shooter sharing equipment. The weightlifter practising in makeshift gyms. The obstacles differ, but the emotional, physical, and logistical burden is the same.
By the time India selects athletes for global events, the pipeline has already shrunk dramatically — not because children lack ability, but because the system makes it almost impossible for them to stay.
This episode asks what it would take for India to imagine a different sporting future — one where the number of athletes we send to global stages finally reflects the size of our nation, and where stories like Raziya’s are not exceptional, but simply the way access is supposed to work.
Credits
Akshay Ramuhalli, Bruce Lee Mani, Gorveck Thokchom, Kishor Mandal, Kruthika Rao, Narayan Krishnaswamy, Prashant Vasudevan, Ram Sheshadri, Sananda Dasgupta, Seema Seth, Shraddha Gautam, Shilpi,Tanvi Avlur, and Velu Shankar.
Special thanks to Raziya Khan for being part of the episode.