Good News For Cycling Enthusiasts! India Gets Its First-Ever Centre To Train Mountain Terrain Athletes In Shimla

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The Logical Indian Crew

Good News For Cycling Enthusiasts! India Gets Its First-Ever Centre To Train Mountain Terrain Athletes In Shimla

The SAI National Centre of Excellence is being set up to provide world-class training facilities to cyclists in India to compete for the 18 Olympic medals in the disciplines of MTB and BMX.

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports is set to build India's first-ever Sports Authority of India (SAI) National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) in collaboration with the Himachal Pradesh government to train athletes in Mountain Terrain Biking (MTB) and Bicycle Motocross (BMX) in Shimla.

The centre is being set up to provide world-class training facilities to cyclists in India to compete for the 18 Olympic medals in the disciplines of MTB and BMX.

Located at an altitude of 2000 meters above sea level, the centre is one of the best high-altitude training facilities in the world. It will have world-class infrastructure, a state-of-art sports science high-performance centre, an Olympic-level track and coaches of international repute, where the best cyclists and local sporting talent in the country can train.

"Owing to the requirement of the sport for a hilly terrain and a suitable climate for training, Shimla emerged as a preferred choice for the NCOE," SAI said in a statement.

HP Becomes The Torchbearer

With the setting up of this centre, Himachal Pradesh becomes the torchbearer of MTB and BMX training in the country and a possible venue for future World Championships for the two cycling disciplines.

The collaboration between the state and the centre to set up the world-class facility was formalised by signing a Memorandum of Understanding on March 23.

Facilities To Be Provided

According to PIB, the NCOE, which will have the capacity to train around 200 cyclists for Olympic-level preparations, will be equipped with one Cross-country Olympics (XCO) level track, one training track with specialised features, one BMX track, one state-of-the-art indoor gymnasium, an indoor setup with virtual trainers, hostel facilities for 100 athletes, coaches and support staff.

In addition, there will be a High-Performance Center for Sports Science with state-of-the-art facilities like an indoor recovery pool, strength and conditioning hall, stream and sauna, a biomech lab, physiotherapy, anthropometry. High-end equipment like breath and lactic analysers, treadmills, heart rate monitors, bicycle ergometers will also be available for sportspersons to use during their training.

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