The boom and bust of sporting culture in A.P.

A weightlifter’s bronze in Sydney remains the only Olympic medal present-day Andhra Pradesh can call its own. In Visakhapatnam, Paul Nicodemus reports how a State that had repeatedly built a system that produced medals, has over the years let it fall apart

Updated - September 11, 2026 06:37 am IST - VISAKHAPATNAM

Young hockey players, from the Under-14, Under-17 and Under-18 categories, train under national player at the Government High School in Railway New Colony, Visakhapatnam. | Photo Credit: V. RAJU

It was September 19, 2000, viewers’ eyes glued to the television screens watched in disbelief as a 25-year-old from a small village in Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam district etched her name in the history books by dishing out a medal-winning performance and made it to the Olympic podium in Sydney. Karnam Malleswari lifted 240 kg in the women’s 69 kg Weightlifting category at the 2000 Sydney Olympics to bag a bronze medal, becoming the first Indian woman to clinch an Olympic medal. Yet, 25 years later, Malleswari’s name still stands alone on Andhra Pradesh’s Olympic honour roll – a stark reminder of a regional sporting culture that once ran deep and has since run dry.

Ironically, a State that had repeatedly built a system that produced medals, has over the years let it fall apart.

Badminton tells a similar story. Swarna Bharati Indoor Stadium, built in 1998, hosted mini-Nationals and a Mayor’s Cup where Saina Nehwal, Parupalli Kashyap, Sai Praneeth, Sikki Reddy and Guru Sai Dutt all played, recalls M.V. Murali Krishna, India’s Para-badminton team coach, who trained there for years. Satwiksairaj Rankireddy trained under him for two months before moving to the Gopichand Academy, and Kidambi Srikanth, Murali Krishna says, started in the city.

“From the nineties to 2010, we dominated like anything,” he says. “In a quarterfinal of eight, five used to be from Andhra Pradesh, and half the Indian team’s strength belonged here.” Today, he says, “I hardly find an Andhra Pradesh boy or girl in the Indian team. And if I do, they are not training in the State.”

Hockey has its own share of glimmer in Visakhapatnam. Hockey ran in the blood of Visakhapatnam’s Anglo-Indian community, as its members made up nine of the playing XI of India’s hockey squad during the Olympic Games through the 1930s and 1940s, recalls June Gallyot, the District Sports Development Officer (DSDO) for Visakhapatnam. The game was organised around works teams from the Port Trust, the Railways, the Navy and the Shipyard, competing at the multi-sport Gymkhana ground.

“From 1980 to about 2000, Vizag district was on top,” says Noel Treasure, president of the Friends Hockey Association. “In the 1980s and 1990s, six players from the city used to play in an 11-member Andhra hockey team. That was the peak. In only these last 10 years, we have collapsed.”

Both accounts converge on 2014. Chandrababu Naidu, as Chief Minister, built world-class sporting infrastructure in Hyderabad and when the State split, that infrastructure went to Telangana. “In the division, we lost everything,” Murali Krishna says.

A generation of infrastructure lag

Infrastructure has been a primary pain point in several sports in the State. Gallyot, who played for India’s junior and senior hockey squads and was first reserve for the Beijing Asian Games before training as a coach, lists the gap plainly. “There is a drastic need for a synthetic athletics track, and for an AstroTurf for hockey,” she said.

“No national-level hockey is played on gravel any more, even at the sub-junior level. The ball moves far faster on turf; on gravel, you tire yourself instead of tiring the ball,” she explained. Andhra Pradesh has three turfs at Kakinada, Kadapa, and Pulivendula. She, says, Kakinada has only one turf, where the international norm calls for a main turf and a warm-up turf. Elsewhere, hockey and football are still played on gravel.

“We had the talent, we had everything, but we never upgraded our infrastructure. We are falling back on this today,” Gallyot says.

Coaching capacity is thinner still. Visakhapatnam district has nine coaches against 15 or 16 in smaller districts, she says.

The profession itself has been diluted, she believes. “Every coach needs a minimum of five years to know the physical, mental and psychological attributes of training. Here, you do a six-week certificate course, and you’re a certified coach. You can’t do that for medicine.”

Peter Das, a national hockey player and coach, put a number on the shortage of grounds behind it. “A small place like Amsterdam has about 120 grounds. In Andhra Pradesh, we say we do not have even one.”