Around 3,000 athletes from 74 nations and territories will compete at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, running from 23 July to 2 August, across ten sports staged over four venue clusters. India has sent one of its largest-ever contingents to the Games, 125 athletes in all, with its biggest-ever track and field representation among them. Within that squad is a group of athletes connected by a common thread: training or support from the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS), the high-performance training centre the JSW Group founded in Vijayanagar, Karnataka, or from the wider JSW Sports athlete programme.
India’s squad spans athletics, boxing, judo and swimming, with athletics alone accounting for 32 of the 125 athletes, by far the largest single-discipline group. Boxing and judo, with fourteen competitors apiece, round out a squad built around disciplines where India has invested heavily in athlete development in recent years. It is in precisely these three sports, athletics, boxing and judo, that the JSW and IIS pipeline runs deepest, and it shows up first in something every athlete in Glasgow will be wearing.
Team India’s send-off for Glasgow, hosted by the Indian Olympic Association in New Delhi, doubled as the unveiling of the contingent's official ceremonial and competition kit. Developed by JSW Inspire and designed by Aaquib Wani, the kit is built around the theme of 'Invisible Trajectories', translating the rhythm and flow of athletic movement into a spirograph-inspired pattern across the jersey.
Speaking at the unveiling, Parth Jindal, Founder of JSW Sports, described the jersey as “our armour, designed with the athlete at the core.” It is a visible, immediate form of backing, worn by every athlete in the squad.
The jersey can be purchased from JSW Inspire’s official website
For a smaller group within that same squad, JSW’s involvement began much earlier, and runs considerably deeper. For over a decade, JSW has proudly partnered with the Indian Olympic Association, supporting Team India across multiple editions of the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.
That deeper involvement centres on the Inspire Institute of Sport, founded by the JSW Group in 2018 at Vijayanagar, Karnataka, as India's first privately funded high-performance training centre. Spread over 42 acres and built adjacent to JSW’s own Vidyanagar township, the campus includes a fully residential facility, a World Athletics-certified track, a dedicated strength and conditioning gym, and an aquatics centre operating to international competition standards. Every athlete admitted to IIS receives a fully funded scholarship covering coaching, sports science, medical and physiotherapy support, nutrition, sports psychology and a tailored academic curriculum, delivered by a coaching and support staff drawn from India and abroad.
Since its founding, IIS has grown into a network of close to 300 resident athletes at Vijayanagar, with satellite centres now running in Manipur, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Odisha to widen the talent search beyond a single campus. The institute has also built dedicated pathways for specific disciplines and groups: a judo programme run jointly with Axis Bank has expanded IIS's coaching bench with specialists such as Mamuka Kizilashvili and runs a structured multi-stage talent search, from open regional trials to residential training blocks at Vijayanagar, to widen the pool of women judokas coming through the system. A separate three-year scholarship programme, developed with Britannia Marie Gold, pairs shortlisted women athletes with Olympic-calibre coaches. Thirteen IIS-trained athletes won medals at Birmingham 2022, a track record built on identifying young talent early and keeping athletes within a single, consistent high-performance system across multiple international cycles rather than a single Games.
That track record has faces attached to it in Glasgow. Triple jumper Praveen Chithravel, the national record holder who finished fourth by a fraction in Birmingham, trained within IIS and is also part of the wider JSW Sports athlete roster, which backs individual athletes with long-term financial and career support outside the residential IIS model. Boxer Preeti Pawar, a 2022 Asian Games bronze medallist at 54kg who reached this year's Asian Championships final, and javelin thrower Rohit Yadav, who returned from injury to book his Glasgow berth, have both trained within the IIS system, as has swimmer Sajan Prakash. Several of the women judokas travelling to Glasgow were developed through the IIS-Axis Bank judo programme. Distance runner Parul Chaudhary, who broke her own national 5000-metre record in Nice in June, is also part of the JSW Sports roster.
Distance runner Gulveer Singh, who holds both the national 5000m and 10,000m records, is also part of this IIS-linked group heading to Glasgow, adding further depth to India's athletics squad.
A kit lasts a fortnight. IIS’ support is built to last considerably longer. By covering the full cost of coaching, sports science, medical care, nutrition and education for every scholarship athlete, the institute removes the financial barriers that have historically pushed talented young Indians out of sport before they reach the international level. Manisha Malhotra, President of IIS, has described the institute’s approach as one built on giving athletes a genuinely world-class environment and the consistent, long-term support that turns potential into performance. For the Glasgow-bound athletes who have come up through this system, that has meant access to the same quality of coaching and infrastructure as competitors from more established sporting nations, at no personal cost, over a sustained period. JSW’s presence at these Games, worn on the kit and built into the training system alike, is best understood as one continuing effort: building the kind of dependable, athlete-first infrastructure Indian sport has often lacked, and supporting contingents across different games and help in building a pipeline of athletes.
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