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

Neeraj Chopra

Big jumps in disciplines where Indians emerged as world beaters; in javelin, 125% spike in women’s participation

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.

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.

Consider the following data:

• The participation in the National Javelin Day, to commemorate Neeraj’s Tokyo Olympics gold medal in 2021, has grown sevenfold in just three years — from 700 in 2022 to 4,974 in 2025.

• In the javelin competition at the junior national championships, there has been a 90% growth (75 in 2023 to 143 in 2024) among men and a staggering 125% among women (61 in 2023, 137 in 2024).

• The spike is more pronounced in shooting, the only other sport where India has won an individual gold medal after Independence — Abhinav Bindra’s historic feat at the Beijing Games in 2008. From 8,011 participants at the National Championships in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, the number surged more than 100% to 16,951 in the ongoing 2025 edition.

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.