Stressing the need for more corporate support to athletes, specially to potential Olympians, Sports Authority of India (SAI) Director General Injeti Srinivas on Monday said such initiatives act as a boost for the promising talents.
Inaugurating a Sports Science Centre at the Manav Rachna International University here, Srinivas reiterated the government's view that sports should be a mainstream subject instead of an extra-urricular activity.
"For India to become a powerful nation, we should have a re-look at the sports policy in our country. It is high time that the private institutions join hands with the government to create infrastructure for the youth," he said, addressing a gathering here.
"On one hand we look at sports as just an extra-curricular activity and on the other hand we complain for our failure to win medals in Olympics."
"But sports isn't all about winning medals. Medals are a feel-good factor. We must take it as a way of life like we treat yoga, which is internationally recognised nowadays," he added.
Multiple Olympian shooters Manavjit Singh Sandhu and Ronjan Sodhi, who are closely associated with the Sports Centre said such infrastructure will help budding and current athletes save more money and time which they spend to train and recover from injuries abroad.
"During our time, we used to travel to Italy to train...even now many of our shooters train in many foreign countries. Now we have all the same Italian technology at our doorsteps. So in that sense, not only the young shooters but all other athletes can take advantage of the facilities here," Ronjan Sodhi told IANS.
Commenting on the new centre, Manav Rachna University Vice President Amit Bhalla said: "This is a state of the art facility and we are reaching out to the Sports Federations so that they can utilise this platform for their teams and grassroot players."
"We have expert physio's and trainers and mental coaches who will be working closely to give the best support to any athlete in this country," he added.
Shedding light on his ambitions of opening a sports university, Bhalla said: "This institute can be the key centre for mainline athletes as well as for grassroot players who can not only identify, work and detect the injuries, posters that is wrong in their actions."
--IANS
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