Sports Minister inaugurates synthetic hockey surface in Sonepat
By ANISunday, July 5, 2009
SONEPAT - Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, Dr. Manohar Singh Gill, today inaugurated the newly laid synthetic hockey surface at Sports Authority of India (SAI), northern regional centre at Bahalgarh in Sonepat.
The new hockey surface will be used during national coaching camps for training the elite hockey players as well as various trainees of SAI training centre.
In addition to this, new hockey surface, SAI northern regional centre, has two hostels with 180 beds capacity, one multi-purpose hall, wrestling, kabaddi and boxing facilities, techno-gymn, sauna bath, football, volleyball and basketball courts.
The regional centre is currently imparting training to 1561 trainees of international and national level in its various centres like Hissar, Bhiwani and Kurukshetra. It is a training hub for holding national coaching camp of wrestling for men for the Commonwealth Games. resently, 88 Commonwealth probables for wrestling in Greeco Roman and Free Style are being trained in the centre.
SAI is in the process of upgrading sports infrastructure and other facilities in its various training centres throughout the country.
In the next one year, four synthetic hockey surfaces, five synthetic athletic tracks and three hostels with a total capacity of 250 beds will be ready for use at various SAI centres.
In addition to this, SAI will also operationalise its training centre at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand with facilities for five disciplines.
The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports is implementing a special scheme for training of Commonwealth probable.
Under the Scheme, SAI is presently running 18 camps in all the disciplines of Commonwealth Games at Bangalore, Kolkata, Patiala, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Pune, Guwahati and Delhi.
A total number of 1180 probables for Commonwealth Games are being trained in these camps.
Four additional camps for training of para-sports persons in the disciplines of swimming, athletics, table tennis and power lifting will be starting shortly. (ANI)
