India, Aug. 7 -- Even in a Commonwealth Games (CWG) of strapped sports and shoestring budgets, Glasgow 2026 featured the largest swimming programme of any edition. Truncated or full-fledged, the pool still rewards a huge chunk of medals at the CWG (of toppers Australia's 171 medals and 70 gold, swimmers contributed 76 and 37).

The pool remains India's major area for improvement for a bigger push in multi-sport events. The country's able-bodied swimmers were by no means expected to challenge for medals at the Glasgow CWG. However, their below-par timings and performances compelled the national federation to look at "reinventing the training system" in the hope of Indian swimmers being more competitive when the country hosts the next CWG i...