New Delhi:
With players from the Mittal Champions Trust bagging 12 medals including five Gold in the Commonwealth Games so far, billionaire India-born businessman Lakshmi Mittal said the goal is to "prepare" and "nurture" many more such sports persons for London Olympics.
"I am delighted with the performance of Mittal Champions at CWG 2010 and am hopeful that under continued world-class professional guidance and care, they will emerge victorious on the Olympic stage as well. At MCT, our goal is to prepare and nurture many more such sports persons for London 2012," Mittal, Trustee of MCT, said in a statement.
Since November 2005, MCT has been grooming some of India's next generation of champions.
Set up by Mittal, Chairman and CEO, ArcelorMittal and his son-in-law Amit Bhatia, MCT's target is to promote India on the Olympic platform.
The Trust provides selected athletes with coaching, training centers, nutrition, physiotherapy and any other support they might need to compete in their sport.
Incidentally, Abhinav Bindra, country's first individual gold at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, is also a product of the Trust.
In the current Games, five gold, five silver and two bronze medals have been won so far by the players sponsored by MCT in archery, wrestling and shooting.
Bhatia said the success of the MCT athletes has only strengthened their belief that India has tremendous talent and potential to take a lead in the international sporting arena.
"This was just the encouragement we needed to scale-up our preparation for London 2012," he said.
The statement said 17 sports persons, sponsored by MCT, are competing in categories like squash (Joshana Chinappa), archery (Bombayla Devi and Mangal Singh Champia), boxing (Dinesh Kumar, Akhil Kumar, S. Samoonta), wrestling (Yogeshwar Dutt, Narsingh Yadav, Geeta Kumari, Babita Kumari), shooting (Abhinav Bindra, Ronjan Sodhi, Lajja Gauswami, Suma Shirur, Heena Sidhu) and athletics (Srabani Nanda and Siddhant Thingalaya).