It’s often been said that India’s athletes have won Olympic medals in spite of the system, not because of it. Now, with India aggressively bidding for the 2036 Olympics, a task force headed by Beijing Games gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, is determined to rewrite that script. It has highlighted critical gaps in Indian sports administration in a 170-page report to the Government: ad-hoc decision making, weak institutional continuity, and an absence of long-term professionalism within the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and state sports departments due to “generalist civil servants” lacking sports-specific expertise. Set up by the Sports Ministry in August, the task force has also made key recommendations to fix the system. “Building strong systems and professional capacity is not separate from the goal of winning medals — it is central to it. Medals are not produced by talent alone,” Bindra told The Indian Express. “They are produced by ecosystems, which include athlete pathways, coaching, education, sports science competition planning, governance standards, integrity frameworks and administrative competence. Countries that perform consistently at the Olympics …