India's lone individual Olympic gold medallist, Abhinav Bindra, Friday underlined the importance of catching them young, in sporting disciplines, for the country to make waves at the global level.
"Having a sports culture in a country like ours is extremely important. If we are serious about sports, we need to focus on grassroots, because grassroots is where we need (to) invest our efforts to create sporting champions of tomorrow," said the 2008 Olympic shooting champion.
He was speaking at the scholarship awards function of Sports for All, a school-level competition.
"Our partnership with SFA is a reiteration of the same. This platform is brimming with potential talent which, if trained in the right manner, can win laurels for the country", added Bindra who was here to scout for young talent from SFA to train in his high performance centres.
Ananya Budhivant (shooting) and Yohaan Panjuani (football) were among seven Mumbai school children who were picked to train at the Abhinav Bindra Targeting Performance Centre (ABTP).
The others were: Joshua Eapen, Saheb Sodhi (both tennis), Deviah Jain (badminton), Reva Ranjan Kotian (karate) and Sahil Atul Manjrekar (mixed martial arts).
Also present at the function was former India tennis star Somdev Devvarman.
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