At New Delhi's Taj Palace hotel the other day, Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, felicitated the six winners of the Adidas FIFA Flag Bearer Contest.
To add to the gleam of the evening were present, dignitaries including Union Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs M.S. Gill, Indian Olympics Association President Suresh Kalmadi besides personalities like TV actor and emcee Shivani Wazir Pasrich.
Keeping up the effort to promote sports among the youth, Adidas, a leading brand name in sports apparel, organised a contest across New Delhi, Mumbai and Chandigarh to search for hardcore football lovers. The winners of the contest were selected on the basis of their performances in the Adidas Light Speed Test. . It was a four-stage test to evaluate the sporting skills of the participants. They were required to get through activities like sprinting over the ladder, dribbling around the cones and obstacles and eventually shooting the ball in to the goal.
The winners — Abhiveer Arjun, Vedaant Nag , Shubhro Bhattacharya and Hitesh Sidana from New Delhi, Sonu Mukesh Arekar from Mumbai, and Sarfaraz Singh Lega from Chandigarh, will soon fly to South Africa to attend the soccer World Cup. The winners, all under 16, will be the official Adidas FIFA Fair Play Flag Bearers during the match between Portugal and North Korea to be played on June 21. All excited about going to South Africa, Delhi boy Hitesh Sidana said, “We are excited and thrilled as it will be the first time that we are going to watch a live event, it is a dream come true for all of us.” Yet another Delhi winner Abhiveer Arjun said, “Ronaldo is God for all football lovers. It would be a great opportunity to meet and to talk to him.”
Mumbai's Sonu Mukesh Arekar added quite optimistically, “We feel that if we try, India could surely qualify for the Soccer World Cup someday.”
