40 Fun Facts About Indian Sports

Which champion wrestler who beat Lou Thesz in 1968 played Hanuman in Ramanand Sagar's TV Ramayan?

Dara Singh played Hanuman in the 1987–88 Ramayan two decades after his 1968 world title win in Bombay, and the role became the most recognised of his long film and TV career.

Which Pakistani president told Milkha Singh 'you didn't run today, you flew', coining the name Flying Sikh?

Ayub Khan made the remark after Milkha beat Pakistani sprinter Khaliq in a 1960 race, the same year the runner finished an agonising fourth in the Rome Olympic 400 m.

Ajay Devgn plays which coach in Maidaan, a 2024 biopic about India's 1962 Asian Games football gold?

Syed Abdul Rahim coached India to that 1962 gold in Jakarta, beating South Korea before a crowd of 100,000, and died the following year.

Dangal dramatised which wrestler's 2010 Commonwealth gold in Delhi, India's first by a woman in the sport?

Geeta Phogat beat Australia's Emily Bensted for that gold, and Dangal cast Fatima Sana Shaikh as her opposite Aamir Khan as father Mahavir.

In 2021 India renamed its top sports award after Dhyan Chand; whose name had it carried since 1991?

Rajiv Gandhi's name came off the Khel Ratna on 6 August 2021, the day after India's men's hockey team won Olympic bronze in Tokyo.

Appu, the mascot of the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, was modelled on a real young animal of which species?

The elephant Appu was based on a real calf named Kuttinarayanan, and those Games opened the newly built Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium as their main venue.

Which Indian Davis Cup star, a finalist in 1974 and 1987, played an MI6 agent in the Bond film Octopussy?

Vijay Amritraj played an agent who shared his own first name, went on to captain a starship in Star Trek IV, and was made a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2001.

India qualified for which FIFA World Cup, the only time it has ever done so, then withdrew before it began?

1950 Brazil was reached only because every other team in India's qualifying group pulled out, and captain Sailen Manna denied the legend that a FIFA ban on bare feet kept India home.

Bombay's Pentangular cricket tournament, scrapped by the BCCI in 1946, grouped its five teams by what?

Religious community decided the sides: Europeans, Parsees, Hindus, Muslims and 'The Rest', a fifth team of Buddhists, Jews and Indian Christians, before a zonal competition replaced it.

Which Bollywood actor owns the Jaipur Pink Panthers, winners of the first Pro Kabaddi League season in 2014?

Abhishek Bachchan's side plays at Jaipur's Sawai Mansingh Indoor Stadium and added a second league title in 2022.

Which goalkeeper, blamed for India's 1–7 hockey loss to Pakistan in 1982, trained the actresses for Chak De! India?

Mir Ranjan Negi spent six months coaching the cast of the 2007 film, whose disgraced coach Kabir Khan echoed the abuse Negi took after that Asian Games final in Delhi.

Kartik Aaryan's film Chandu Champion tells the story of which swimmer, India's first Paralympic gold medallist?

Murlikant Petkar won that gold at Heidelberg in 1972 with a world record 37.33 seconds in the 50 m freestyle, and Kabir Khan directed the 2024 biopic.

Which runner, the Payyoli Express, missed 1984 Olympic 400 m hurdles bronze by a hundredth of a second?

P. T. Usha clocked 55.42 seconds for fourth in Los Angeles, and in 2022 became the first woman elected president of the Indian Olympic Association.

Which weightlifter won India's first Olympic medal by a woman, a bronze in the 69 kg class at Sydney 2000?

Karnam Malleswari's Sydney bronze put the first Indian woman on an Olympic podium, and no other Indian woman reached one until the London Games of 2012.

Which bantamweight wrestler won independent India's first individual Olympic medal, a bronze at Helsinki in 1952?

K. D. Jadhav's bronze at Helsinki came four years after the Maharaja of Kolhapur funded his first Games trip, to London in 1948.

Which middleweight became India's first Olympic boxing medallist, with a shared bronze at Beijing in 2008?

Vijender Singh shared that bronze after a 5–8 semi-final loss to Cuba's Emilio Correa, then turned professional in 2015 and won the WBO Asia Pacific super middleweight belt.

Which wrestler won 58 kg bronze at Rio 2016, the first Olympic wrestling medal by an Indian woman?

Sakshi Malik went on to win Commonwealth Games gold at Birmingham in 2022, six years after the Rio podium.

Which 2017 world champion at 48 kg won India's weightlifting silver in the 49 kg class at Tokyo 2020?

Mirabai Chanu lifted a total of 202 kg for that silver, the second Olympic medal by an Indian weightlifter and the first in 21 years.

Who was the first recipient of the Khel Ratna, India's highest sporting honour, for the 1991–92 season?

Viswanathan Anand, the 'Lightning Kid' who became India's first grandmaster, collected the inaugural award years before his first world title.

Which Indian honour for sports coaches, instituted in 1985, is named after the royal teacher of the Mahabharata?

The Dronacharya Award goes to the coaches, while the Arjuna Award, named for Drona's star pupil, goes to the athletes themselves.

India beat the same country in the 2004, 2007 and 2016 Kabaddi World Cup finals, all staged in India — which?

Iran lost all three finals, 55–27, 29–19 and 38–29, then finally beat India 27–18 in the 2018 Asian Games semi-finals in Jakarta.

Which Indian football competition, first played at Shimla in 1888, is the oldest existing club tournament in Asia?

The Durand Cup is named after Henry Mortimer Durand, the Raj foreign secretary who also gave his name to the Afghanistan–Pakistan frontier line.

Which Indian became the first from the country ranked world No. 1 in WTA doubles, in 2015, partnering Martina Hingis?

Sania Mirza won three women's doubles majors with Hingis, at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2015 and the 2016 Australian Open, and six majors in all.

Which gymnast finished fourth in the Rio 2016 vault final, the first Indian woman gymnast at an Olympics?

Dipa Karmakar scored 15.066 in Rio attempting the Produnova, a vault only five women in the world had then mastered.

Which north-eastern state, where polo is played as sagol kangjei, is credited as the birthplace of the modern sport?

Manipur's version was codified under King Khagemba in 1605, and the Calcutta Polo Club that British officers founded in 1862 is the oldest still in existence.

Which driver became India's first in Formula One, qualifying 12th on debut for Jordan at the 2005 Australian Grand Prix?

Narain Karthikeyan returned to the grid with the backmarker Hispania team in 2011 and 2012, but his only points came in that single Jordan season.

Which Kolkata club's barefoot side beat the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1911, the first native IFA Shield winners?

Mohun Bagan won 2–1 before an estimated 80,000 crowd, Abhilash Ghosh scoring the winner two minutes from time after Shibdas Bhaduri's equaliser.

In which city did Neeraj Chopra throw 88.17 m to win India's first World Athletics Championships gold in 2023?

Budapest's National Athletics Centre saw Chopra become the first Asian to win a world javelin title, a year after he became the first Indian to win a Diamond League final, in Zurich.

P. V. Sindhu won India's first badminton world title in 2019, beating Nozomi Okuhara 21–7, 21–7, in which Swiss city?

Basel staged the final in which Sindhu became the first Indian to win gold at the World Championships, after silvers in 2017 and 2018 that included a 110-minute loss to the same Okuhara.

Who became the first Indian to win a Grand Slam title, the 1997 French Open mixed doubles with Japan's Rika Hiraki?

Mahesh Bhupathi and Hiraki beat Lisa Raymond and Patrick Galbraith 6–4, 6–1 in that final, the first of many doubles majors he would collect.

Which 2001 All England champion coached Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu to Olympic medals at his Hyderabad academy?

Pullela Gopichand beat world No. 1 Peter Gade on the way to that Birmingham title, then built the academy that produced the 2012 bronze and 2016 silver medallists.

Which city, home of 2024 world chess champion D Gukesh, hosted the 2022 Chess Olympiad after it was moved from Russia?

Chennai took the Olympiad after FIDE stripped Moscow of it following the invasion of Ukraine, and Gukesh, born in the city in 2006, became the youngest undisputed world champion in 2024.

Which Indian teenager reached the 2023 FIDE World Cup final in Baku, losing to Magnus Carlsen in rapid tiebreaks?

R Praggnanandhaa had already beaten Carlsen online at 16, in the 2022 Airthings Masters, becoming only the third Indian to take a game off the world champion in any format.

Which javelin thrower, who lost his left hand to a live cable aged eight, won Paralympic golds in 2004 and 2016?

Devendra Jhajharia was the first Indian Paralympian to win two golds, and in 2024 he became president of the Paralympic Committee of India.

Which 10 m air rifle shooter became the first Indian woman to win Paralympic gold, in Tokyo, then retained it in Paris?

Avani Lekhara's Paris win in the standing SH1 event made her the first Indian woman with three Paralympic medals.

Which Indian became the oldest first-time doubles world No. 1, at 43, after the 2024 Australian Open?

Rohan Bopanna won that title with Australia's Matthew Ebden, making him the oldest major winner of the Open Era in men's doubles.

Which Kolkata ground, officially Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, hosted the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup final?

Salt Lake Stadium opened in January 1984 with room for about 120,000 and was the largest football stadium in the world until North Korea's May Day Stadium opened in 1989.

Boxer Mary Kom, the only woman with six world amateur titles, was nominated in 2016 to which body?

Rajya Sabha membership came by presidential nomination on 25 April 2016 for Mary Kom, who went on to win a record sixth world title.

Which Amritsar-born wrestler, unbeaten across a 52-year career, had a training routine that Bruce Lee avidly followed?

The Great Gama was crowned Rustam-e-Zamana, world champion, in 1910, and Bruce Lee borrowed his Hindu squats and push-ups.

Which younger brother of Dhyan Chand won Olympic hockey golds in 1932 and 1936 and has a Gwalior stadium in his name?

Roop Singh's stadium in Gwalior was a hockey ground until 1988, when it was converted into a cricket venue.