Encouraged by the achievements of State’s sportspersons and making their presence felt in international fora, the Odisha Government has decided to adopt a multipronged strategy to boost the State’s sports profile.
The Sports and Youth Services Department has chalked out a roadmap for scaling up activities both for individual and team sports.
Sports and Youth Services Secretary Vishal Dev held discussions with senior officials of the Directorate of Sports here on Tuesday on the strategy to be adopted for development of sports activities. The department is in touch with various national associations in this regard.
While in the individual sports front, athletics, weightlifting, archery, rowing and badminton would be promoted, hockey and football would be provided the requisite boost in the team sports segment, said a
senior Directorate of Sports official.
In order to improve athletics, the Government has started discussions with the Athletics Federation of India (AFI). Sports Authority of India (SAI) Director General Injeti Srinivas, an IAS officer of the Odisha Cadre, is understood to be taking personal interest in promoting sports profile of the State.
To begin with, the State Government has decided to put in place the required infrastructure and improve the
coaching facilities. The Talent Identification Exercise would be scaled up at the village level to hone untapped skills, sources added.
They said a number of national and international sports events would be organised in the State to encourage the budding talents. As the State has a huge concentration of tribals, the Government is considering promotion of tribal sports to make local talents shine at national and international levels.