Bhubaneswar: India’s emerging sporting hub, Odisha, made its foray Monday into shooting as the state government joined hands with Olympic medallist Gagan Narang to set up a 10m and 50m range at the Kalinga Stadium here. Also associated with the project is the Aditya Birla Group. The facility is called the Odisha Aditya Birla-Gagan Narang Shooting High Performance Centre. The shooting centre will add to the much acclaimed hockey and athletics infrastructure of Odisha.
Further cementing Odisha’s reputation as the sports capital of India and providing major boost to infrastructure in the state, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurated three state-of-the-art sports facilities in Hinjilicut, Chatrapur and here.
Khel Ratna Narang has been mentoring promising shooters for some years now while running the Gagan Narang Sports Promotion Foundation (GNSPF). He was delighted with the development.
“Even before the 2012 Olympics (where he won a bronze medal) I wanted to be the agent of change. Change the way people perceive shooting sports in India,” Narang said during the inauguration. “I wanted to give them what I did not have. Today opening of the 10m range in Odisha is a massive milestone for all of us. We have conducted talent hunt programme here and I can say that this state has more talent than what meets the eye. So far 75 kids have been selected,” the 37-year-old champion shooter added.
Among other things, the facility will feature an air conditioned range with 22 targets (10 electronic targets and 12 electrical manual targets), training capacity for 60 shooters per day. The range will also be equipped with adequate weapons and consumables, besides performance analysis equipment.
The 10m range is the first step towards the setting up of the shooting HPC, which will now help in training the scouted talent as well as the current crop of shooters in Odisha in the six Olympic medal events.
“Talent search has already being conducted in two stages where the students in the age group of 11-14 have been tested for various meta- cognitive and physical attributes,” Narang informed. “Those students who have cleared these tests successfully would be finally introduced to the sport of shooting immediately,” he added.
The 22-lane range setup at the heart of the city is one of its kind and GNSPF intends to use the facility to its capacity to broad base the Olympic sport of shooting. The range is expected to attract a lot of national level athletes from nearby states to continue uninterrupted training and development under watchful eyes of coaches from GFG.
Patnaik said, “This demonstrates our resolve to make Odisha the sporting capital of India. We will be launching more grassroots development programme across all districts. With quality infrastructure, a new generation of world class athletes will emerge from Odisha in the next decade. It requires a lot of dedication, hard work and support system.’
Also present during the programme were Aditya Birla Group’s Kumaramangalam Birla and Odisha Sports Minister Tusharkanti Behera.