Paris 2024 will have more athletes from Maharashtra: Shirgaonkar

Maharashtra Olympic Association General Secretary, Namdev Shirgaonkar

Wrestler Kashaba Jadhav (bronze medal at Helsinki 1952) remains the first and only individual Olympic medallist from Maharshtra. This does not do justice to a state that boasts of immense sporting talent and pedigree. And that's something newly-elected Maharashtra Olympic Association General Secretary, Namdev Shirgaonkar is keen to change. Shirgaonkar, 40, who previously held the post of vice-president of MOA, was elected General Secretary unopposed last week. He is now hoping that his plans to initiate and encourage sport at the grassroot and professional levels come to fruition with minimum opposition.

"The first thing I'll do is conduct a review to check for any pending work that will be acted upon immediately. A vision plan for the next four years will be made and discussed within the board to check how we can work together to execute the plan for our athletes. The idea is to not produce or nurture only one or two Olympians, but to look at the bigger picture. We rely too much on one or two athletes. We need to have a large number of athletes coming forward and that will happen when we strengthen the grassroot level system because that's where champions are born," Shirgaonkar told mid-day.com on Monday.

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Maharashtra contributed just six athletes (shooters Rahi Sarnobat and Tejaswini Sawant, archer Pravin Jadhav, shuttler Chirag Shetty, 3000m runner Avinash Sable and sailor Vishnur Saravanan) to India's list of 119 sportspersons at the Tokyo Olympics. Shirgaonkar realises there is a need to increase Maharashtra's contribution herein. "Although Maharashtra has great infrastructure, its optimum utilisation has been lacking. Our plan is to build from the ground up, to train athletes at the state level to perform at the national level and subsequently increase their chances of qualifying for Team India. But there is one thing that I must mention, in the context of the Tokyo Olympics. Maharashtra was one of the hardest hit states by the Covid-19 pandemic and a lot of our training centres were shut. But, I agree that the foremost plan definitely is to increase this number of athletes from Maharashtra at the Paris Olympics. For this, the first thing to do is to identify athletes, who possess the potential to qualify for Paris 2024. The next step is to talk to the state associations and find out how MOA can help increase their chances of qualification and immediately put those measures in place," explained Shirgaonkar.

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