India's Sporting Revolution: How October 2025 Ignited a Global Powerhouse
The Night Everything Changed: Or Did It? NEW DELHI - Fifteen thousand people watched, scattered across a stadium built for 60,000. Devika Mehra crouched at the starting line of the 100m T36 final, and in that suspended moment before the gun, the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium felt simultaneously electric and hollow. The crowd that was there roared with genuine passion. But entire sections sat empty, a visual nobody wanted to acknowledge. The gun cracked. Mehra exploded. Twelve point eleven seconds later, she crossed the line and an Asian record died. The stadium erupted, 15,000 voices generating the sound of 40,000 through sheer intensity of emotion. The kind of noise that comes from people who chose to be there, not people fulfilling obligations. But let's be honest about what happened in October 2025: it was simultaneously a breakthrough and a warning. Three sporting events that proved India's potential while exposing its failures. Success and failure occupy the exact same space, ...