A new year brings with it new questions (or old ones giftwrapped in new forms), all the more so in an Olympic year, with Paris 2024 taking centre-stage for many of India’s sportspersons.
ESPN India takes a look at eight major questions that need to be answered in 2024:
Who will win the wrestling civil war?
Champion wrestlers vs disgraced former president currently under trial. Close ally of said former president vs the sports ministry. This isn’t just one side vs another, this is multi-dimensional on a scale rarely seen before in Indian sport.
If what transpired at the end of 2023 wasn’t dramatic enough — Sanjay Singh winning the WFI election and going straight to Brij Bhushan Singh’s house, Sakshi Malik retiring, Bajrang Punia returning his Padma Shri and Vinesh Phogat returning her Khel Ratna and Arjuna Award, the Ministry suspending the WFI all over again — 2024 has started with a bang. That’s because Sanjay Singh went and announced that he and his fellow members of the new WFI executive council do not recognise the ministry suspension and will conduct nationals themselves. What will happen now is anyone’s guess.
Now, there are massive political factors at play here but make no mistake: this a battle for Indian wrestling’s future.
Will Neeraj Chopra hit 90m… or more importantly, retain his Olympic crown?
Neeraj Chopra has won everything and has already started on round 2. The question that still nags him, though, is hitting that hallowed mark of 90m. It doesn’t really matter to anyone but him as long as he’s standing atop the podium at the end of it all, but in Paris to do that he might need to scale the 90m peak.
If Arshad Nadeem and Anderson Peters (unlikely) are fit and throwing at their best (which is 90+) he will have his work cut out. More urgently, though, is Johannes Vetter claiming on his social media that he’s more or less back… the big German has a best of 97.76m and if he’s physically able to, he will go all out to correct his Tokyo disaster.
Can PV Sindhu create history?
PV Sindhu is one among two Indian athletes who have won two individual Olympic medals. Paris 2024 gives her the chance to make it an unprecedented three. But to do that, it’s not just history she has to battle, it’s her own pretty terrible form.
Currently out coalescing from injury, Sindhu will need to up her game considerably to ensure her presence at Paris, let alone on the podium. Logic would dictate the latter impossible, but Sindhu didn’t become the Sindhu we know today by listening to someone else say what’s possible.
Can Nikhat Zareen put an Olympic seal on her Worlds dominance?
Nikhat Zareen is the world’s most dominant light flyweight/flyweight boxer – two consecutive World Championships golds and a Commonwealth gold speak to that and not even the minor blip of a bronze at the Asian Games dims her Olympic-medal-winning potential.
Only three Indian boxers have ever won boxing medals at the Olympics, all bronze, and if she can top those, her hall-of-fame greatness will be sealed emphatically.
Will Sunil Chhetri hit a century?
Also see, perennial question: who after Chhetri?
93 goals in 145 appearances for India. Any which way you look at that number, it’s uber impressive. The sheer consistency of Sunil Chhetri’s goalscoring for the national team is something else — but ever so close to the 100-goal milestone, he may get stuck on double digits.
The tough nature of India’s AFC Asian Cup group combined with Chhetri turning 40 this year could mean he doesn’t reach a mark only three men have achieved in history.
As for the other question: answers for a replacement will become clearer the more ISL coaches trust talents like Sivasakthi Narayan and Kiyan Nassiri in centre-forward areas. The more pertinent way of looking at it, though, might be in the goal-scoring form of India’s wingers… the more the goals are spread about, the less your reliance on central figure to score every time.
Will we see an Indian not named Anand fight to be men’s world champion?
Ever since the format of the chess world championship changed to have the contenders for the crown come through the FIDE Candidates tournament, only one Indian has even appeared on the list of 12 people that play the Candidates: a certain Viswanathan Anand. India’s only (and five-time) world champion has been sitting lonely atop the hill for a while now, but if he looks down there are a few that are climbing steadily up.
Three of those intrepid mountaineers are at the Candidates this year: R Praggnanandhaa, D Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi and there are very real chances that one of them could face up to Ding Liren for the world championship crown.
Koneru Humpy, meanwhile, is the only Indian woman to contend for the women’s crown in its 97-year history and she could do it all over again soon. Both her and R Vaishali have qualified for the women’s category of the Candidates.
This could become a historic year for Indian chess.
How will India’s young athletes respond to the pressure of the big O?
In Tokyo, India’s young shooting contingent marched into the ranges as heavy, hyped favourites before hobbling out with just one finalist, forget medals. This led to many a brickbat being thrown at them but what most of those doing the throwing didn’t factor in was the immense difference in pressure between competing at an Olympics and anywhere else.
From the shooters to badminton superstars Sat-Chi to boxers and wrestlers, there are plenty of young Indian athletes looking to claim the ultimate prize in sport, but it will all depend as much on how they handle the mental side of it as much as their undoubted technical prowess in their respective sport.
Can India convert their success at Asian and CWG levels into performances at the highest level, the Olympics?
A record 107 medals at the Hangzhou Asiad. A solid 61 medals at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Fourth place finishes at both. The last two years have been a solid window into India’s prowess at tier II competitions across multiple sports… but there is only one tier 1 competition. In Tokyo, India achieved their best-ever medal tally, but at seven medals won that remains relatively inconsequential in the overall Olympic medal tally (India finished 48th in Tokyo).
Converting success at the Asiad-and-CWG to the Olympics at a large scale on a consistent basis will take a lot more than simply individual endeavour and that’s where the strategic thinking of the federations that control sport in India must take a dramatic step up. It is a slightly long-term, tough process, though, but one worth undertaking considering the potential that keeps peeking through across Indian sport.
