Mission 2036: From Vision to Victory

India's Mission 2036 — the ambitious plan for hosting Olympic Games in Ahmedabad and to become one of the top 10 countries by medals won — is unlike any of the previous attempts made by our nation at sport. History has shown us that while India has had the desire, making this vision a reality will require more effort than just a plan.

In this article, Imran Nadaph, Vice President - High Performance Sports at Dani Sports Foundation examines the gap between strategy formulation and on-ground delivery in high-performance sport. Drawing on international frameworks, he explores the critical importance of operational discipline, adaptive planning, stakeholder alignment at both national and state levels, and — crucially — the need to invest in developing the professional capability of the administrators, coaches, and programme managers who will be responsible for turning policy into medals. 

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Fast Forward to Summer 2036! Ahmedabad will be hosting the Olympic Games with 1.5 billion people watching from around the world. Millions of athletes who have received the nurturing, funding and scientific training necessary over the past ten years through the collaboration of the National and State Governments, as well as the private sector, will be standing on the podium for events that were previously not even imaginable for our country. Our country will have finished in one of the top ten medal-winning countries.

Isn't that an exciting picture? What matters now, though, is how do we get there?

The awkward truth is that India has previously had some great visions; for example, the National Sports Policy, which was produced in 2001. All National Sports Federations had well-crafted mission statements that have existed for many years. However, India's greatest struggle continues to be in its inability to deliver operational discipline while pursuing its dreams. Mission 2036 is by far the most ambitious program ever, with two components: hosting the Olympics and also finishing in the top ten of the medal tally (currently ranked 71st at Paris 2024 [with only six medals], which is equal to the total of six medals earned in London 2012). The difference between where we want to be and where we are located is extreme.

Therefore, the question we should ask ourselves is not whether this vision inspires; it does. Rather, we should ask: what will it take to accomplish this type of execution on such a grand scale?

Strategy Is Not Execution

In his landmark work on leadership and execution, Ram Charan argues an important point that is relevant to this discussion: " strategy is a hypothesis" whereas "execution is the way we prove or disprove that hypothesis". Ram believes the vast majority of organizations do not fail to create strategies; they fail entirely due to poor performance during execution. Specifically, organizations frequently make the mistake of believing that simply announcing their plans or programs equals delivering the program successfully.

There is a long history in Indian sports of doing just this. Throughout history, we have created plans, designated budgets, and established agencies to implement those plans. However, we have not been nearly as successful at creating operational systems capable of turning the investment made in these resources into actual results on the field.

Take the example of the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), which has been the principal vehicle for supporting elite athletes in India. At its best, TOPS has transformed many athletes into champions in their respective sports. For example, the performance of Olympic Gold Medalist Neeraj Chopra at the Tokyo 2020 Games was partly due to the provision of uninterrupted, focused support through TOPS. The Programme has enabled Indian athletes to receive specialized training and coaching from overseas, exposure to international competitions, individualized sports science support, and provide Indian athletes access to top-quality training and competition equipment. Over the past decade, these benefits have culminated in the establishment of an operational model that can be truly celebrated by India.

The opportunity now is to build on that foundation and close the gap between intent and implementation rigour. By improving selection criteria, reducing timelines for funding, and incorporating an accelerated feedback mechanism within the program, we will not be making small administrative enhancements, but taking the next logical steps in evolving a program that has already demonstrated excellence. In elite sport, where time is short and the preparation for events does not allow mistakes, having excellent operational execution provides teams with the ability to go from winning medals to being close to missing the podium. The roadmap for success is available. The next step for TOPS is to continue executing with discipline to achieve its goals.

What Successful Olympic Programs Do Differently

When examining those nations which have dramatically transformed their Olympic performance, it can be noted that three things have consistently stood out. These have nothing to do with creating ‘better’ vision statements. 

The first is no-compromise funding, established through the UK Sport model as a result of the experience at Atlanta 1996 (where team GB achieved only 1 gold medal). No-compromise funding involves allocating resources based on empirical evidence of the expected medal opportunity and withdrawing funds equally based on the lack of realised potential. This method may appear harsh but it created a culture of performance accountability that cascaded through the entire ecosystem. Team GB went from 1 gold at Atlanta to 29 golds at London 2012 — on their home turf — and have maintained a ranking of one of the top five countries in the world for medals since that time. The improvement in the organisation was not accomplished through better vision statements, but rather a restructured operational model. This model has further evolved into the "Win Well" strategy. Influenced by recent Wellbeing Initiatives, it balances the strict medal-driven feedback loop with a focus on athlete welfare and integrity

The second is feedback architecture, developed by the Australian Institute of Sport in the 1980s which has been used to create high performance to date. The Australian Institute of Sport put systematic review mechanisms at each and every level of its program - athlete reviews, coach reviews, program reviews & institutional reviews - that were conducted within defined timeframes. There was no reliance on end-of-program retrospectives and the processes were frequent, iterative & responsive such that if something was not working as intended they identified this early enough to make course alterations.

The third gap that exists in developing a strong sports ecosystem is the alignment among all stakeholders. In federal sporting ecosystems — which India, with its constitutional structure, most certainly is — there are a multitude of examples that highlight this disconnect, particularly between national policies and how those policies are actually implemented at a local level. For example, Odisha has established itself as a state that truly supports sports: they have created a permanent home for Indian Hockey (Kalinga Stadium), developed a sports corridor (₹4,000 crore), and hosted major international sporting events (within 90 days notice). In contrast, Bihar presents a marked divergence from Odisha's successful implementation of national sports policy objectives. The Bihar sports ecosystem is significantly lacking in proper infrastructure and administration to support consistent achievement of national sports policy objectives, such as growing sports participation among youth through talent identification and development.

What Mission 2036 Needs to Get Right

The Khelo Bharat Niti 2025 and the National Sports Governance Act represent the most comprehensive policy overhaul Indian sport has seen since Independence. The intent, and the institutional architecture being put in place, are genuinely encouraging. What they must now be tested against is the harder discipline of execution.

Mission 2036’s success depends on three primary factors.

1) The first factor is the operational discipline found at the program level. Every major initiative — TOPS, KIRTI, Olympic Training Centres, and the NSF performance-based funding — will require a method of delivery, just as much as they require a design. Who is accountable for what, by when, and what happens if targets are missed? These are not bureaucratic questions; they are the questions which segregate programs that produce results and those which simply exist.

2) The second factor is adaptive planning. As Mission 2036 is a 10-year program, it will be developed in a rapidly changing environment. The first major evaluation of the program will be at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games and will most certainly generate a number of surprises — Some of the disciplines will produce exceptional results, others will fall-short of expectations, some athletes will peak and new athletes will emerge. The overall system must be designed to recognize these signals and adjust quickly. Planning for 4 years in sport is a “set-up” to identify the incorrect priorities for 2036, as sporting environments change dramatically in the course of one year let alone four years.

The third — and perhaps the most underestimated — is the capability of the people responsible for implementing all of this. Systems are created by people, and these people must be intentionally developed, just as elite athletes are developed.

India’s sports administration ecosystem contains a considerable and generally unaddressed deficiency of leadership capability that cannot be ignored. The administrators, program directors, high-performance managers, head coaches and state sports officials responsible for implementing programs at every level are frequently very experienced in their field of expertise but lack formal training in the strategic and operational areas required for delivering the success expected from high performance sport. The ability to create and implement an overarching sports policy, monitor and evaluate delivery at the ground level, create systems of accountability through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), employ sports science and analytics effectively, manage the identification and development of athletes from youth to senior levels, and lead high-performing teams in environments that may be considered ambiguous are not instinctive skills. These are the result of investments made by the most successful sporting nations through deliberately developing people with capabilities required to perform these activities at an elite level.

In addition to investing in infrastructure and athlete development, India must make an earnest and sustained effort to develop the professional competence of the people who manage the sports system. National and state sports administrators need to gain a deeper understanding of high-performance models. Head coaches need to develop not only their technical skills but also their ability to lead operationally. Sports programme managers need to learn how to interpret performance data, use feedback loops, and hold their teams accountable with both rigor and care. As Abhinav Bindra has put it plainly: high performance is not something that happens every four years on a podium — it is something that happens every day, in the quality of the decisions made by the people running the system. That principle applies as much to administrators as it does to athletes. The arithmetic of Mission 2036 — quadrupling India's medal tally— is only achievable if the people responsible for execution are genuinely equipped to deliver it.

The Real Test

Ultimately, it will not be the announcements at conclaves, or budgets passed in Parliament, and not even the arenas under construction in Ahmedabad that will determine the success or failure of Mission 2036. It will be determined by the work done in gyms, on tracks, during coaching sessions, through weekly performance evaluations, and by the thousands of micro-operational decisions made by coaches, program managers, and administrators across the country leading up to the Games .

That is where all of the other countries that have successfully transformed their Olympic successes have done the real work. It is the same place that India must do it too.

The vision is in place. Resources are being put into use. What now follows — the un-glamorous, day-to-day, systematic and disciplined work of implementation — is what will ultimately lead to India celebrating its achievements at the Games in 2036.

India has the talent, scale, and for the first time, an actual systematic framework to support its goal. What it needs now is the operational courage to deliver on its commitments without excuses.

References & Sources

• Union Cabinet Press Release — Khelo Bharat Niti 2025 (July 1, 2025). pmindia.gov.in

• PIB (Press Information Bureau) — Releases on NSF Conclave, Army Sports Conclave 2025, Sports Budget, and Mission 2036. pib.gov.in

• Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports — NSDF Annual Reports, SAI Budget Documentation. yas.nic.in

• Parliament of India — Rajya Sabha Winter Session 2025 — Sports Ministry data submission (state-wise Khelo India allocations, SAI centre enrolment data)

• UK Sport — Performance funding model and no-compromise investment framework. uksport.gov.uk

• Australian Institute of Sport — High-performance programme architecture and athlete review systems. ais.gov.au

• Charan, R. & Bossidy, L. — Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002). Crown Business