A demographic giant with 1.3 billion inhabitants, India does not have the same status at all in sporting terms, despite its successes in field hockey and cricket.

However, the country is considering bidding to host the 2036 Olympics and will showcase its strengths at the next session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is due to take place in Bombay in September-October 2023.

For Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, it is "right time" to be a candidate to host the world's biggest sporting event, he told the

Times of India

newspaper .

"If India puts so much effort into promoting sports, I can assure you that we will not only host the Olympics, but we will host them in a big way," the sports minister continued in an interview. released Wednesday.



Mr. Thakur said that India could be a candidate with the city of Ahmedabad, in the native state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gujarat, which is home to the largest stadium in the world, opened in 2020 and bearing the name of the leader.

Modi's government is striving to make India a global sporting powerhouse and has invested huge sums in national infrastructure.

10 other countries also interested

The IOC has awarded the next three Summer Olympics to Paris (2024), Los Angeles (2028) and Brisbane (2032).

In October, the IOC said that 10 countries had already expressed interest in hosting the 2036 Olympics. These countries include Indonesia, Germany, South Korea, China and Qatar.

India hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2010, but the event was marred by numerous accusations of corruption and mismanagement.

Another bad point for the country, its national Olympic committee is in the sights of the IOC which had threatened in September to suspend it, as it has already done in 2012 and 2014, because of “recurring internal conflicts and problems of governance of the instance.

The IOC had therefore decided to postpone its next session to September-October 2023, initially scheduled for Bombay in May.

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