5 Sports in which India can win a medal in Tokyo 2020

India winning just two medals at Rio Olympics with other medal prospect looking bleak does not reflect the true medal winning potential which exists in Indian athletes. Meagre spending on sports is hurting India’s medal winning chances in a big way. The amount of funds that the athletes receive for preparing themselves for the big occasion is a fraction of what other countries spend on their athletes. In a recent report it has been found out that UK spends 5.5 million Euros for every medal that it wins. This is the sort of investment which is required if we expect are athletes to outperform their peers at such a grand event. Apart from this sports is not the first choice as career for most sports persons and most of them drop out because of high risk, uncertainty and low rewards, which needs to be addressed by the government by coming up with schemes that incentivize sporting culture in India. With such shoddy state of affair let us look at some sports in which India can win a medal in Tokyo 2020

1) Field Hockey

Over a long period of time Indian hockey was dominant in the Olympic competitions winning 11 out of 12 times between 1920 and 1980. However the state of affairs started deteriorating after adoption of synthetic courts in all major tournaments.

India had last made it to the knockout stages in 1980 Moscow Olympics. This was also the Games in which it won last of their eight gold medals in hockey. After a gap of 36 long years India made it into the knockout stages of hockey at Rio Olympics.

The hockey team has shown tremendous improvement under the guidance of Coach Roelant Oltmans, which raises our hope from the team for a medal in 2020. We need to take one step at a time Indian hockey team did not qualify for 2008 games, then ended up at 12^th position at the London games and improved in this Olympics loosing after reaching the Quarterfinals.

The team is showing constant improvement which raises my hopes for a podium finish at the next games.