BHOPAL: To ensure that country wins more medals in international tourneys and sporting talent is properly honed across the state, MP hockey academy and sports department are organising a comprehensive talent hunt from August 24.
Sports minister Yashodhara Raje Scindia said that talent search this year will help in creating a big pool of talent for the future.
"This will be a big initiative by any state government," said Scindia. This talent hunt meant for all the academies is being organised at macro level in association with the school education department and tribal department. Sports department has already received 39,000 registrations for the talent hunt, wherein highest are for athletics academy.
Director sports Pawan Jain said, in order to discover sports talent in Madhya Pradesh, a talent selection programme will be run in the form of a campaign. “The Talent Search 2021 will start from August 24 in Madhya Pradesh to find and polish future sports talents in rural and urban areas. Under this, at least 2,500 boys and girls will be selected and trained in academies run by the sports department with state-of-theart resources and trainers,” he said.
Almost 80% players selected under the campaign will be from MP and the remaining 20 percent from other states. All of them will be selected on the basis of merit. “Under the campaign, boys and girls in the age group of 12 to 18 years will be selected from all districts to prepare future sports stars through best training in 18 sports academies. Players may also be over 18 years of age in cases of special achievement,” added Jain.
The registration is being done online, but in special cases it can also be done offline. Talent search will be for athletics, shooting, water sports (kayaking-canoeing, rowing, sailing, slalom), karate, fencing, boxing, wrestling, taekwondo, judo, horse riding, men's hockey, triathlon, women's hockey, badminton, archery, men's cricket, yoga and malkhamb.
The process of selection is being done as per the prescribed criteria and following Covid guidelines.
