Tata Steel organises webinar on ‘Athletics in the next decade: The success, the challenge and the road ahead’

Bhubaneswar, Oct 2: Tata Steel, today, organised an interactive panel discussion on ‘Athletics in the next decade: The success, the challenge and the road ahead’ with sports stalwarts of the country. The esteemed panelists for this discussion included, Vishal K Dev, Secretary cum commissioner, Sports, Youth Services & Tourism Government of Odisha; Geoff Gardner, Vice President, World Athletics; Adille Sumariwala, Olympian, President - Athletics Federation of India; Anju Bobby George, Asian Games Gold Medalist; Anand Menezes, Olympian, Senior coach, Athletics Sports Department. Tata Steel and James Hillier, Head Coach - Reliance Foundation Athletics HPC, Odisha. Rajiv Seth, Project Director, NTHA Odisha. This webinar was organised as part of Tata Steel’s continuous efforts towards promotion of sports in India. The session delved on many insights on the future of athletics in India, the road map for the coming decade, preparing the ecosystem better for the challenges ahead and highlighted aspects that still need grassroot level attention. The Indian sports have come a long way and there have been many successes to rejoice as well. The discussions also focused on ways to encourage local talent from grassroots communities join sports and make it more accessible to players across the country - all to enable a brighter future. Vishal K Dev, Secretary cum commissioner, Sports, Youth Services & Tourism, Government of Odisha,said:“We have been focussed on developing the conducive ecosystems for sports. Day coaching programmes, coaching centres, scientific talent acquisition and the various MoUs signed recently are the steps taken towards building a sporting culture within the State. The Govt. of Odisha works very professionally and is making huge strides in building the infrastructure and bring the best of experts and professionals to set up the Sports Academies.” Geoff Gardner, Vice President, World Athletics, said: “We at World Athletic Congress believe in encouraging governments across the globe of developing sporting culture. We also believe it is important to engage with the local talent and the communities there and inspire them to be a part of this sporting movement. We are collaborating with broadcasters globally to ensure they position these sporting events and the local athletes positively to inspire future young players to join the game. The digital technology has made it pretty accessible for everyone to watch the games which has helped us immensely; this has changed the way sports is consumed, watched and is more of entertainment now which has given a huge boost to the games and the athletes globally.”