Mittal Champions Trust backed shooter Abhinav Bindra, who won India’s first individual gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
AFP/New Delhi
A sports charity set up by steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal that helped produce India’s only individual Olympic gold medallist has shut down, apparently due to a lack of funds, an official said yesterday.
The Mittal Champions Trust (MCT), founded in 2005 to raise India’s sporting standards and produce Olympic medallists, was headed by Mittal’s son-in-law Amit Bhatia.
The charity backed shooter Abhinav Bindra, who won India’s first individual gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt who took bronze in London four years later.
Former tennis player Manisha Malhotra, who was the trust’s CEO, confirmed local media reports that the venture had closed down. “They did not want to spend more money,” Malhotra said, without elaborating.
The London-based Bhatia told the Indian Express newspaper yesterday that it was “now time to hand over the reins to others to continue with this wonderful initiative,” referring to other trusts and charities.
Taking a swipe at Indian sports administrators, Bhatia added: “There is a lot of disorganisation within the Indian sporting system. The lack of planning within the government and federations makes it challenging to implement systems.”
The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) was until recently suspended from the Olympic movement for electing tainted officials to key posts at its elections in December 2012.
The ban was lifted last month when the IOA, under pressure from the International Olympic Committee, revised its constitution and elected new officials headed by world squash chief N Ramachandran.
Shooter Bindra said the trust, which looked after the training and funding of medal hopefuls, would leave a void for emerging athletes who struggled to get good practice facilities and funding.
“We should not depend solely on trusts, who are here only because of their individual interests and passion,” he told the newspaper. “Our federations need to be proactive and create an environment through which the athletes can profit.”
India returned from London with its biggest ever Olympic haul of two silver and four individual bronze medals, surpassing the one gold and two bronze it won in Beijing four years before. Apart from Bindra’s medal, India has won eight Olympic field hockey gold medals, but the team’s last gold glory was back in 1980.
