President, Athletics Federation of India, Adile J. Surmiwala; President of SAAF, Dr. Lalit Bhanot and Associate Vice President Athletics Federation of India, Abu Metha held a press conference in view of the SACCC and 56th NCCC at Hotel Vivor Kohima on 25th March 2022.

Adile J. Surmiwala said North East India has a tremendous amount of sporting talents and expressed gratitude to Chief Minister, Neiphiu Rio and Associate VP of AFI, Abu Metha for the way the event is being organized, "we believe that from this event, the youngsters will get enthused by witnessing this event. We are trying to do talent identification here and provide high-performance coaches to train the Nagaland team."

He emphasized the need to create a full sports ecosystem with proper infrastructure, coaches, athletes, officials etc. He said it took the federation 15 years to secure an Olympic medal in athletics. Adding that the federal has two-pronged strategy- one is grass-root level and the other is elite level, "we have foreign coaches for the elite strategy, we are also identifying events for the North East and we have got a set of coaches for that."

He mentioned that AFI did the maximum work during the COVID-19 Pandemic. He added that the AFI created thousands of coaches and conducted online courses for pre-level 1 and level 1 for school teachers, parents, and coaches, training for level 2 was also conducted in different languages in over 600 districts. He said the base has to be strong and everything starts from the district and the federation has conducted over 20 national level championships with full COVID protocol.

He said close to 50 Athletes will take part in the international section. At the national level, 34 states and boards are participating with 378 men and 296 women and 674 athletes in total.

Dr. Lalit Bhanot said the event is the second edition of the SAAF competition, and the first one was held in Bhutan, the event had to be postponed because of the COVID pandemic. We will be training more district-level coaches from Nagaland, conducting various technical examinations so that they will become independent and conduct the events on their own and the athletes can avail training in-house.

Abu Metha mentioned that physical infrastructure is of great importance. One such structure is synthetic tracks which is one of the foundations of sports that will help the athletes, and investing in synthetic tracks is an investment in all-round sports. He said the Federation is strengthening the ecosystem of human resources and the ecosystem of sports should be upgraded in the State and the North East.

Replying to queries, Metha said the state government is giving tremendous efforts to improve sports infrastructure in Nagaland. He said the actual budget for the event was Rs. 4.6 crore and the state government has sanctioned Rs. 2.3 crore for this event while the Bank of Baroda has invested Rs. 18 lakh. Because the event had been postponed, he said that there was an increase in the budget for the event.

President of SAAF said if synthetic tracks are built in different districts and states all across the country, it would be easier for athletes to train and also encourage more youngsters to take part in national and international championships.

President of AFI said there is a "new kids athletic program" that is coming up in world athletics and India has been selected as one of the first countries for the pilot project. He said, "It is an intense program which is fun-oriented to bring children into the athletic stream through fun and games and by the end of 2022 it will be launched." He also mentioned that their main focus is on the tracks being created at district levels and they're trying to encourage the states in the country to at least create grade 3 tracks which will help motivate the younger generation in joining athletics.

(Atuzo, Assistant Director, Temjen, IA and Takum, IA)