Glitter without gold: The curious case of sports in Gujarat

However, a deeper look into the state’s sporting culture states otherwise. The data presented by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports at the Rajya Sabha in the 2025 winter session of the Parliament reveals a major disconnect between perception and reality.

Infrastructure boom, grassroots bust

For starters, the state doesn’t have any SAI Training Centres (STCs).

The STCs, in its essence, are training centres to groom athletes at the grassroots level between the ages of 10 to 18. It can be a residential or non-residential centre with long-term training, coaching, and support, and it works in tandem with the state government to develop the next generation of athletes.

In contrast, states like Kerala, West Bengal, Assam, and Punjab have four STCs each, while the likes of Karnataka, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan have three apiece.

Even states like Goa and union territories like Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry have two functional STCs.

Gujarat, though, has a non-residential Extension Centre. But the athlete count for it stands at zero.

To put this into perspective, Assam has 34 athletes training at its extension centres, Madhya Pradesh has 61 athletes, Odisha has 56, Rajasthan has 45, and Jammu and Kashmir has 18 athletes.

The extension centre, as the name suggests, is an extension to the STCs with the same motto, but only on a non-residential basis and is located in schools, colleges, etc. It serves as a feeder system into the STCs.

Unlike a few other states, which have a number of adopted akharas to train budding wrestlers, Gujarat scores zero on this front as well.

The aspect where the Western state stands out, however, is the presence of two National Centre of Excellence (NCOE).

The NCOEs are sophisticated facilities scattered across the country to train high-performance athletes, the kind who make it to big-ticket events like the Olympics, Paralympics and others, with advanced coaching and sport science.

The question remains: With no STCs and an Extension Centre with zero athletes at the grassroots, what good does a NCOE for elite-level training does for the state? Surely, high performance athletes from across the country can flock down to Gujarat for training, but where’s the concept of homegrown athletes?

Gujarat lags behind only Delhi (4), West Bengal (33) in terms of NCOEs, but these states do a much better job at the grassroots via STCs and extension centres.

Delhi, for example, supports 45 athletes through STCs, while West Bengal has 150 athletes under the scheme.

The union territory of Chandigarh also has 3 NCOEs, but no presence of STCs or Extension Centres.

Drop in Khelo India athletes

The trend extends to the union government’s flagship Khelo India Scheme as well. Gujarat is one of the few states to show a constant decline in the number of potential athletes identified over the last three years.

The state had 81 athletes in the Khelo India Scheme for 2022-23. It dropped to 65 for 2023-24 before further going down to 62 athletes in 2024-25.

This drop of 23% in three years is in sharp contrast to neighbouring Rajasthan, which went from 81 to 133 athletes in the same period. Even Tamil Nadu (167 to 194) and Karnataka (136 to 154) have displayed steady growth in identifying the next generation of athletes.

Gujarat does recover itself in the SAI Promotional Scheme for 2024-25, reaching 261 athletes from 195 the previous year. But even that number pales in comparison to powerhouses like Haryana (912), Maharashtra (708), Assam (682), Kerala (614) and others.

When Gujarat hosted the National Games in 2022, it finished a lowly 12th in the standings. The state had only taken a beating in the next two editions held in Goa and Uttarakhand, finishing 17th and 16th respectively, which further indicated its struggles.

The data revealed by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports only reaffirms that the state is currently an infrastructure without a base.

The stadiums, NCOEs, hosting, and bids are all glitter without gold, i.e, grassroots sporting culture.