Encouraged by the country's performance in the recent Beijing Olympics , the state govt has launched a multi-pronged programme to ensure its participation in the 2012 London Olympics. The project includes the setting up of a world class sports city and a talent hunt at the grassroots to provide scientific training to sportspersons.

“We visited Punjab and Haryana last week to have a firsthand knowledge of the sports facilities there. We have undertaken simultaneous work of mapping sports activities in all the districts at the school level,” said Vipul Mitra, state rural development secretary and president of the state table tennis association.

Mitra was in Kutch to attend the foundation laying ceremony of the indoor stadium of the Kutch District TT Association. Incidentally, the Rs 2-crore-project at Adipur is the brainchild of Mitra, who had thought of this a decade ago, while working as the deputy chairman of the Kandla Port Trust.

He said the port town had seen many national level tournaments and had become the state headquarters of TT. Therefore a need was felt to have an indoor stadium of international standards here. He further said that the Sindhu Resettlement Corporation (SRC) had also allotted land for the purpose.

Mitra said the project will give a boost to sports activities in the border district. He said a sports city will be built on 500 acres of land at a cost of Rs 500 crore on the lines of one under construction in Pune and Dubai. He said the ongoing sports mapping project’s aim is to identify areas for a particular sports . “Since the tribals of the state are good in archery, it would be the natural choice in such areas. Similarly the game of choice for Saurashtra would be wrestling because the people here are well-built,” he said. He added that after identifying the sportspersons, they will be imparted special training to compete in the national and international sports competitions.

Nirmala Gajwani, SRC Chairperson said more projects were in the pipeline for the modernisation of Gandhidham, which was incidentally developed as a new township for the resettlement of refugees from Pakistan in the aftermath of the Partition.