MUMBAI: Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju, who is on tour around the country’s Sports Authority of India centres, said that the country’s success at the Olympics has not been encouraging and that his regime has set sights on the 2024 Games in Paris and the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“We don’t have much time to make big changes before the Tokyo Olympics,” Rijiju said at the SAI complex here on Sunday.
“We can’t make athletes in a year. So right now we are doing the best to help athletes qualify for the 2020 Olympics. But in the long term, we have to do something new because we are a country of more than a billion but the number of medals is not proportional. We haven’t done well in Olympics; even in hockey the last medal we got was at the 1980 Games.”
At the last Olympic Games in 2016 in Rio, despite sending its biggest contingent ever with 120 athletes, India returned with just two medals: a silver in badminton by PV Sindhu and a bronze by Sakshi Malik in wrestling.
“Our target is the 2024 and 2028 Olympics. That gives us four to eight years to make policy changes, improve sports facilities, scientific research etc.” The Sports Minister also paid a visit to the Army Sports Institute (ASI) in Pune, which provides state-of-the-art facilities to its athletes. He said that the government is looking at ways to best utilise ASI to help Olympic hopefuls. The Services have been one of the biggest contributors to India’s success on the sports field. At least in word, the ministry is looking to make SAI centres more accountable.
While addressing athletes and coaches at SAI Mumbai, Rijiju said that they will be striving for “clean and green” sports facilities to give some of the most promising athletes in the country a conducive work environment. “We are asking SAI centres to click pictures of various places. And then they have to send pictures of the same place in another six months so that we can check what changes and improvements they have made.”
On his visit to Mumbai, Rijiju made a quick inspection of the synthetic athletics track and the canteen before heading out.