With an effort to further strengthen the sports infrastructure available at Sports Authority of India’s National Centre of Excellence in Lucknow, the Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Anurag Singh Thakur on Sunday inaugurated a 300-bedded hostel, an upgraded hall for wrestling with state-of-the-art facilities in line with international standards and a sports medicine centre.
SAI NCOE Lucknow has been the centre of women’s wrestling National camps with India’s elite women wrestlers training there. The addition of the 300-bedded hostel increases the capacity of NCOE Lucknow to house 460 athletes at any given time, including national campers. The new hostel will be dedicated to women athletes while the existing two hostels of 80 beds each will be reserved for boys training in the centre. The sports medicine centre, which has been upgraded from the existing medical centre, will have sports science experts as well as a sports psychologist. Advanced biomechanic machines are being installed to make it a fully-equipped sports science centre. Speaking at the launch, Thakur said, “The SAI Lucknow centre was a small centre earlier which has now been revamped to match international training standards. Our efforts are always to ensure that our athletes have the facilities that can help them perform better and these changes are a step in that direction.” Thakur stressed particularly on the good performance being displayed by women athletes at the centre and spoke about the performance of M Martina Devi, the Manipuri weightlifter who trains in NCOE Lucknow and has broken 7 records at the recently-concluded Khelo India Youth Games in Madhya Pradesh. “The facilities of a centre are put to test when athletes from the centre compete. Martina’s recent feat proves that NCOE athletes in Lucknow are indeed getting the kind of training, diet, lodging facilities that they need.”
