Odisha to set up High Performance Centres for athletics, hockey and badminton

Bhubaneswar, which has of late, become a hub for hockey, is set to come up with High Performance Centres for athletics and hockey besides a state-of-the-art badminton academy, to be run by celebrated coach Pullela Gopichand.

The capital city of the coastal state has hosted important international events such the Hockey Champions Trophy in 2014, Hockey World League Final and Asian Athletics Championships last year.

Bhubaneswar is also set to host the men's hockey World Cup from November 28 to December 16 this year and preparations for the mega-event are all but over with the unveiling of the refurbished Kalinga Stadium by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday evening.

"The total budget spent on renovating the stadium for the World Cup is about 82 crores," Vishal Dev, Sports and Tourism Secretary of the Odisha government, told PTI.

"The Chief Minister gives a lot of priority to sports and the idea now is to move towards strengthening sports at grassroots level. Our High Performance Centre for athletics hopefully should be launched in about two months. We are looking at High Performance Centre for hockey also."
"We would like a professional person or team to run the academies. We would ensure that there is no interference from our side as long as they are being run professionally."