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The importance India places on sports and sportspersons have usually been limited to a handful at the top. While our country teems with individuals equipped with talent and skill, there is clearly a lack of coaching and infrastructure.
In a first, the SAI National Centre of Excellence for training in mountain terrain biking and bicycle motocross will be set up in Shimla. The Sports Ministry, Youth Services, and the sports department of the Himachal Pradesh Government have come together in this venture to set up a world-class training institute.
The end goal of an institute such as this remains to increase India’s representation in such sports (and beyond) at prestigious stages such as the Olympics. There are 18 categories in the Olympics for MTB (Mountain Biking) and BMX (Bicycle Motorcross), and this facility and its trainers will work toward competing in the future.
“The time has come to expand our orbit and train athletes for the Olympics in other disciplines where Indian athletes are showing prospects and where we can bag more medals to improve the overall tally at the Olympics.”
— Anurag Thakur, Sports Minister
With a capacity of 200 cyclists, the institute will be set up 2000 metres above sea level. The Ministry’s statement said that the centre will have world-class infrastructure, a state-of-art sports science high-performance centre, an Olympic-level track, and coaches of international repute, where India’s best cyclists and local sporting talent can train.
The idea of this sports centre is welcomed wholeheartedly in the hope that it leads to more of them. Sports, as much as they are about competition, are also about discipline, structure, and health, and this institute in Shimla, too, will be a provider of the same.
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