The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Mahesh reiterates his Olympic stand

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Thursday, May 24, 2007
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Mahesh reiterates his Olympic stand

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Mahesh Bhupathi reiterated his commitment for the Olympic cause and stated that it was the ''logical choice'' that he and Leander Paes join hands in the Beijing Games next year.

While announcing the tie up of Globosport with Apollo Tyres for further development of Indian tennis, Mahesh said, "ideally we should be playing together at the Olympics if we want to give India the best chance of a medal.''

Mahesh was quick to point out that the Olympics was 15 months away and that the two needed to focus on tennis.

Leander and Mahesh have played in three Olympics so far and missed a medal narrowly at Athens in 2004. Mahesh said it was a great day for Indian sport and thanked the initiative of the Apollo Tyres to invest Rs.100 crores over the next 10 years in its ambitious attempt to make an Indian hold the trophy at Wimbledon.

"It is not a far fetched idea as many of you may think. We have no dearth of talent in the country. We have had top juniors over the years, but most of them have not been able to make the transition into the senior ranks for want of a system. We will build a system and hopefully build champion players,'' Mahesh said.

As per the initial programme, 20 children in the age group of 12 to 15 will be selected on the basis of their performance in the open tournaments to be conducted from June. The selected kids would be trained in Bangalore at the centre run by Mahesh with Italian Mose Navarra as the chief coach.

"We already have players like Akash Wagh, Christopher Marquis and Kyra Shroff training at the centre. We have an elaborate set up built over the last four years. It doesn't make sense to go anywhere else. We will have experts visiting the centre to ensure that the champion is home bred. The aim is to build a singles champion as we have had a few doubles champions,'' Mahesh said.

Yuki Bhambri was the first tennis player to be supported by Apollo Tyres last year. The company has signed the doubles pair of Mahesh and Radek Stepanek as its brand ambassadors since then.

"We will be adding four to five players every year and provide them professional guidance. We will also be associated in holding mega-events with international players,'' the Joint Managing Director of Apollo Tyres, Neeraj Kanwar, said.

To start with, a two-day international event in a unique format will be hosted at the Gymkhana Club here in December, and that is scheduled to be an annual feature subsequently.

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