ROURKELA: Odisha has aggressively been projecting itself as the sports capital of India. It's already a leader when it comes to hosting big-ticket international events in hockey, be it the men's World Cup in 2018 or the FIH Pro League matches. The Kalinga stadium in Bhubaneswar has become a permanent training base for both the men's and women's national hockey teams since 2018.
The coming eight months will see Odisha hosting two major international competitions - FIFA U-17 women's World Cup in Bhubaneswar between October 11 and 30 and men's hockey World Cup from January 13 to 29, 2023 in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela. India will become the first nation to host four men's hockey World Cups after the success of Mumbai (1982), New Delhi (2010) and Bhubaneswar (2018).
TOI visited the cities of Bhubaneswar and Rourkela to understand Odisha's ambitious bid to host future global multi-sports events, including Olympics and Asian Games, development of state-of-the-art high-performance centres in partnerships with corporates and, of course, the state's preparedness to host U-17 football and senior hockey World Cups.
First up is the women's football World Cup. For this purpose, the state sports department has developed four FIFA-standard football training centres with natural turf in Bhubaneswar (one each at Kalinga and the Capital High School and two at the Odisha State Armed Police 7th Battalion). In addition to it, one artificial turf football playground is under construction at the Unit-1 ground in the capital city. The total budget for hosting matches and other World Cup-related training centres has been pegged at Rs 55 crore.
In Rourkela, one of the world's largest hockey facilities is coming up near the Chhend locality, named the 'Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium', which can accommodate up to 20,000 spectators. The stadium is built at a cost of Rs 200 crore.
