The founder-director of Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), Geet Sethi, reiterated his objective to provide all assistance to an athlete in pursuit of excellence and to win medals at the Summer Olympics. The cue sports champion believes India would better its performance at Rio next year.
“The athlete remains centrepiece to our programme, and he or she is paramount to us at OGQ. We don’t want to get into building infrastructure. We are here to fill the gaps and support the athletes by giving them world class assistance. We began by supporting shooter Gagan Narang before the Beijing Olympics, now we are supporting 43 senior sportspersons and 22 under the scholarship programme. We would like to support around 200 in the next five years,” said Sethi, after OGQ presented its performance sheet to an audience comprising the sponsors, donors and media.
The OGQ provides potential medal winners with the best training and coaching, and also gives them scientific nutrition and diet plan. “We were all handicapped: Geet, Prakash (Padukone) and myself, but still delivered some great results. Our aim is to create a level-playing field for Indian athletes so that they can compete with the best in the world. It’s difficult to win medals because so many are chasing it,” said Niraj Bajaj, who is on the OGQ board and was a four-time National champion in table tennis.
ADVERTISEMENT
Bajaj requested the corporate world and individual donors to fund the activities of the OGQ.
“We had a very good response last year. Over 100 big and small corporations and individual donors made contributions to our fund-raising initiatives. The CSR opened up only last year. We have created awareness among the big corporations by visiting them,” said Bajaj.
ADVERTISEMENT