Important to win more than 10 medals if India are to host Olympics in 2036: PR Sreejesh at HTLS 2024
PR Sreejesh says India must bulk up its medal tally if the country gets to host the Olympic Games in 2036.
More than two months after India’s contingent returned with six medals from the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) formally expressed the nation’s ambition to host the 2036 Games by submitting a ‘Letter of Intent’ to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). With 12 years to prepare, India and its athletes have ample opportunity to continue their upward trajectory in global sports, but PR Sreejesh, a two-time Olympic medalist, believes that hosting the Games alone is not enough. Sreejesh, who secured a bronze medal with the Indian hockey team at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and followed it up with another one in Paris earlier this year, asserts that India must first bolster its medal tally to justify the honour of hosting an event as big as the Olympics.
After achieving a record-breaking haul of seven medals at the Tokyo Olympics, expectations were high for the 117-member Indian contingent to surpass that milestone in Paris. Yet, the final count fell short, with six medals – one less than three years ago. The disappointment was compounded by six fourth-place finishes and the absence of a gold medal, a sore point that will linger for some time. Speaking at the 2024 Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Sreejesh emphasised the need for India to deliver a strong performance if the Olympics were to grace the Indian shores.
“Financially and technically, we are capable of hosting an international event like Olympics. But the question is how is it going to be? How it’s going to benefit our athletes? How many medals are we going to win? Are we capable of participating in each event? These are the questions that are raised. Because we do participate in events. Nowadays, we are dreaming about winning more medals. Individual medals. Hockey is one of the events where we expect to win, shooting another. Wrestling, boxing badminton as well,” Sreejesh, a star attraction alongside bronze medal winner Swapnil Kusale, and gold medallist at the 2024 Paralympics, Sumit Antil, said at the HTLS 2024.
“But what about gymnastics and swimming, which have more events and more medals? Even if we are hosting the 2036 Olympics, how many medals are we expecting? Are we covering these areas? Because hosting Olympic Games could be easy, but winning a medal is going to be a tougher task for us. We need to think about this aspect before we are stepping in. If we are hosting but then struggle to get into double digits, then it’s going to be real tough. Playing the Olympics itself is great pressure. These two guys [Swapnil Kusale and Sumit Antil] definitely know about that. To play it in front of your own people will require a lot of effort, and you need to dream bigger.”
Sreejesh opened up on his iconic goalpost celebration from the Tokyo Olympics 2021, which he reprised in Paris after the Indian hockey team secured bronze, marking back-to-back Olympic medals for the team. Sharing his journey into hockey, Sreejesh revealed that his athletic pursuits began with basketball, volleyball, and even football. Football was a natural choice, given its immense popularity in his home state of Kerala – a detail he cleverly used to underscore his next point.