India at the FISU World University Games 2025: A Mixed Campaign of Promise, Challenges, and Reform
India’s campaign at the 32nd FISU World University Games, held from July 16–27, 2025, in Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr region, reflected a fascinating mix of sporting highs, historic firsts, and deeply concerning administrative lapses. While the medal tally fell short compared to previous editions, the performances in archery, athletics, badminton, and tennis offered a glimpse of an evolving and diversifying university sports ecosystem. Yet, the shadow of organizational shortcomings underscored the urgent need for systemic reform.
Medal Tally, Breakthroughs, and Consistency
India finished the Games with a total of 12 medals: 2 gold, 5 silver, and 5 bronze, placing 20th overall. This was a sharp drop from the 2023 Chengdu edition, where India enjoyed its best-ever performance with 26 medals (11 gold, 5 silver, 10 bronze) and a 7th-place finish.
A major reason for this dip was the absence of shooting from the 2025 program, a sport that alone had contributed 14 medals (including 8 gold) in Chengdu. Adjusted for this change, India’s performance in other disciplines actually held steady, winning the same number of medals (12) without the shooting boost a sign of underlying strength across sports.
Archery: The Standout Discipline
Archery proved to be India’s strongest suit, bringing in five medals:
- Gold: Parneet Kaur and Kushal Dalal in the compound mixed team event.
- Gold: Sahil Jadhav in men’s compound individual.
- Silver: Parneet Kaur in women’s compound individual.
- Silver: Men’s compound team (Kushal Dalal, Sahil Jadhav, Hritik Sharma).
- Bronze: Women’s compound team (Parneet Kaur, Avneet Kaur, Madhura Dhamangaonkar).
Parneet Kaur emerged as the star, completing a rare set of medals (gold, silver, bronze), showcasing resilience and consistency.
Sahil Jadhav’s gold was especially poignant, coming just days after he struggled in the team final.
Athletics: Personal Bests and Historic Medals
Athletics contributed another five medals:
- Silver: Ankita Dhyani in women’s 3000m steeplechase with a stunning personal best of 9:31.99, missing gold by just 0.13 seconds.
- Silver: Praveen Chithravel in men’s triple jump.
- Silver: Seema in the women’s 5000m.
- Bronze: Women’s 20km race walk team (Sejal Singh, Munita Prajapati, Mansi Negi).
- Bronze: Men’s 4×100m relay team, clocking 38.89 seconds, matching the previous national record set in 2010.
In field events, Dev Kumar Meena set a new national record in pole vault at 5.40m during qualification, finishing fifth overall. These performances highlight a generation of athletes who are not only medaling but also pushing national benchmarks.
Historic Breakthroughs in Racquet Sports
Beyond archery and athletics, the Games were historic for Indian racquet sports:
- Badminton: India’s mixed team won bronze, the country’s first-ever badminton medal at the World University Games.
- Tennis: Vaishnavi Adkar secured a bronze in women’s singles, becoming the first Indian woman and only the second Indian ever to medal in tennis at the event.
These milestones point to successful grassroots development and diversification of India’s sporting base.
Governance Failures: Lost Opportunities and Hard Lessons
However, India’s sporting achievements were overshadowed by severe administrative failings that denied participation to athletes with real medal potential. Administrative Errors and Athlete Exclusions
Key issues included:
- In badminton, six of twelve selected players were barred from competing in the mixed team event due to officials failing to submit complete lists at the managers’ meeting. Despite this, the remaining players secured a historic bronze.
- In athletics, athletes like long-distance runner Seema and 400m sprinter Devyaniba Zala were denied participation after their names were missing from final start lists a mistake officials attributed to difficulty in filling forms.
Athletes openly expressed disappointment and disbelief. Shuttler Alisha Khan shared that officials told them “the form was too complicated,” illustrating a lack of professionalism. These failures, recurring across sports, highlighted systemic problems within the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), the nodal body overseeing university sports.
Government Response and Path to Reform
The backlash was swift. The Sports Ministry announced steps toward overhauling university sports governance. Measures under discussion include:
- Disbanding AIU and the School Games Federation of India (SGFI).
- Creating professionally managed national federations focused on school and university sports.
- Introducing the National Sports Governance Bill 2025, which aims to:
- Increase transparency and accountability in national federations.
- Bring sports bodies under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
- Ensure gender diversity in executive committees.
- Standardize elections and create a National Sports Tribunal for dispute resolution.
These reforms seek to build an athlete-centric, professional, and transparent ecosystem that prevents such administrative failures in the future.
Looking Ahead: Hope and Opportunity
India’s performance at Rhine-Ruhr 2025 might appear underwhelming on paper compared to Chengdu 2023, but the story beneath the numbers tells of resilience and transition:
- Despite losing an entire sport (shooting), India matched its non-shooting medal tally.
- Achievements in archery, athletics, badminton, and tennis suggest a broadening of medal prospects.
- Record-breaking performances (Ankita Dhyani, Dev Kumar Meena) highlight emerging individual brilliance.
With structural reforms in motion, there is potential to harness this talent pipeline and transform Indian university sports into a consistent force globally.
The Rhine-Ruhr 2025 Games were both a warning and an inspiration: a call to fix what’s broken in sports governance and a reminder of the extraordinary talent that, given the right support, can shine on the world stage.
