From ‘Just Participating’ To Winning Medals With Fire In The Belly – Gagan Narang Traces Change In Indian Sport

Neeraj Chopra put Indian sport on world map once again as he won a gold medal at the World Athletics Championship. With a throw of 88.17m in the javelin throw final, Chopra won the maiden World Athletics Gold Medal By an Indian. Neeraj has been a trail-blazer of sorts. After he made it big in javelin throw, the athletics discipline showed a great potential. The result was that two other athletes Kishore Jena and DP Manu also finished in top-6 in Sunday’s final.

Gagan Narang, 2012 Olympics bronze medallist in shooting, said that the current crop of Indian athletes are fearless and have gone through a paradigm shift when it came to winning mentality.

This week has particularly been great for Indian sport. Whereas Chopra won gold medal the World Athletics Championships, R Praggnanandhaa finished runner-up at the 2023 World Cup. On Sunday, HS Prannoy finished with a bronze medal in men’s singles at the World Badminton Championships.

This is a major shift in Indian sport. Earlier, shooting was India’s primary focus for medals at multi-sport events. Now, the avenues of medals have increased manifold. So, are shooters under pressure? Narang had an interesting reply.

“Not at all. Shooting has seen a generational shift. When there is a generational shift, there is always a lull before the storm, I would say. We have great bench strength in other sports. Shooting will only complement these sports,” Narang, who is a vice-president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), said.