Sports Authority of India Expedites Efforts to Make 'Vision 2020' a Reality

New Delhi: Giving wings to its ambitious plan of spending Rs 2000 crore on athletes for 2020 Olympics, the SAI has instructed the respective NSFs to identify their pool of young sportspersons and provide them with the best of facilities and training over a period of eight years.

A programme 'Vision 2020' under the aegis of Union Sports Ministry had been chalked out last year, which aims at selection of the junior talents, imparting good training and arranging for their exposure tours abroad.

Giving shape to its plan, the Sports Authority of India has started holding meetings with the heads of the various National Sports Federations on a daily basis to start the project at the earliest.

"SAI DG Jiji Thomson has started calling on federations and is holding meetings with one or two federations on a daily basis. The DG wants to finish off the task at the earliest as this ambitious project is running behind schedule," an official told PTI.

"Even countries like Bangladesh and South Africa have started their respective 'Vision 2020' programmes and we are yet to identify the talents. The meeting is an effort towards instructing the federations to prepare their list of probables, a pool of athletes, from which they could be selected for the future competitions," the official added.

The unique scheme, based on the pattern of Chinese and Eastern European countries, is aimed at identifying the talent at the age of 13-15 years and to provide them with the best of facilities and systematic training so as to enable the players to attain peak performance at the 2020 Olympics.

The official informed that the SAI wants to put an ultra-modern monitoring system in place to keep a track of the athletes' progress in its bid to realise the medals dreams.

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