Bhubaneswar: The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sport (MYAS) held its latest Mission Olympic Cell (MOC) meeting in the Odisha capital on January 19 and 20, on the sidelines of the ongoing FIH Men’s World Cup 2023.
It was the first time that MOC meeting was held outside Delhi.
Members of MOC meet once or twice every month when they travel to Delhi to discuss key agenda points of India’s Olympic Programme and proposals of Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) athletes.
This time, they continued their discussions while watching the India versus Wales Pool D encounter at Kalinga Stadium.
“With this opportunity (to see the World Cup match) we got a good chance to see them perform during a competition and can judge them rightly and can take that into consideration during the next meeting and evaluate them in a better manner to fill in the gap. So for us, it was a great opportunity and I would like to see many more matches, not just in hockey but other sports as well whenever we get a chance,” said Former long jumper Anju Bobby George, an MOC member.
The men’s and women’s hockey teams are the only teams that are funded under MYAS’ TOPS Scheme and get an annual fund of Rs 24 cr under Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) Annual Calendar for Training and Competitions (ACTC) scheme.
“MOC and TOPS are giving all Indian athletes and the hockey teams so much support in the last few years and we get to see that in their performances, especially that of the men’s Hockey team, first by winning an Olympic medal after 41 years and now by going to the World Cup on back of the Olympic medal. so we have got to keep supporting them,” said another MOC member, former Indian hockey captain Viren Rasquinha.
