The Union Sports Minister Vijay Goel chaired the meeting of all the stake-holders to review the preparations for the Commonwealth and Asian Games scheduled for next year.
The Minister said that the government had taken a number of steps to strengthen the support extended to the sportspersons, but conceded that a lot still needed to be done to make India a sports power.
In the day-long meeting in which the eminent players, coaches, members of various national sports federations, the Indian Olympic Association, officials of the Sports Ministry and Sports Authority of India (SSAI) made presentations, the Minister emphasised the importance of the federations in recruiting the best coaches and support staff to train the athletes.
The Minister agreed that the infrastructure needed to be upgraded and better efforts made towards spotting talent, monitoring performance, promote school and university-level competition in a big way and capitalise on the stadiums as well as the best coaching academies in the country.
Sports secretary Injeti Srinivas said that there was no dearth of talent or the resources for achieving sports excellence, and that success would largely depend on the convergence and coordination among all the stake-holders.
The Commonwealth Games is scheduled to be held in Gold Coast, Australia in April, and the Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia, in August-September, next year.
The meeting at the Vigyan Bhawan was also attended by, among others, members of the Olympic Task Force, members of the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) and the national observers of various disciplines, as Tokyo Olympics was also in the radar.
