NCOE The Epicentre For Sports Excellence: A Report On TOPS Initiative By Sport Authority Of India

In September 2014, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MYAS) launched the Target Olympics Podium Scheme (TOPS) with a vision to fulfil India's goal of winning medals at the Olympic. A committee was formed to scout for elite athletes and support them to achieve this goal.

The focus of the management at TOPS is to ensure that high-priority sports such as archery, badminton, boxing, hockey, shooting, wrestling and others are represented by Indian athletes at the international level.

The Sports Authority of India (SAI) was set up by the Department of Sports, Government of India with the objective of promoting and developing sports in the nation and bringing forward the best athletes to compete in national as well as international games . MYAS and SAI together formed the first committee of TOPS.

Careers360 in this article discusses the workings of TOPS.

The main objective of establishing TOPS is to enhance India's performance at the Olympics and Paralympics. At the time of 2020 Olympic Games, the programme was fully operational and had provided potential training and support to athletes representing the country at Olympic games as well as the Paralympic games. As promised the athletes were given all the necessary support such as overseas training, international competition, equipment, and coaching camps. This is an ongoing programme which also provides a monthly stipend to each athlete.

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What is TOPS NCOE?

The Sports Authority of India has established National Centers of Excellence (NCOEs) across the nation to train athletes to excel at international sporting events like the Olympics, the goal of TOPS. NCOE is like any regular coaching centre but for India’s top athletes getting ready to compete in international competitions. To do so, NCOEs have residences set up for athletes, international level infrastructure and playing facilities, sports science support, individual diets for athletes prescribed by trained nutritionists, and overall supervision under the best coaches, qualified support staff.

Number of NCOE Across India

Till 2021, SAI had 23 sports centres as the National Centers of Excellence (NCOEs). It has around 15 regional centres in 10 regions. SAI headquarters have five centres. A total of 2,788 candidates are part of these regional centres, out of them more than 47 per cent of candidates are women.

Many athletes stay far away from the regional centres and so NCOE also offers residential facilities for the outstation candidates. For the localite candidates non-residential facility is available.

NCOE’s Centres In India: 2021

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Success

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik won silver and bronze in wrestling and badminton, respectively. The TOPS Athletes earned two gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal at the 2016 paralympic games. The effectiveness of the scheme is also seen at the CWG, where around 47 out of the 70 athletes who competed and earned medals at the CWG received TOP Scheme funding. And in 2020 Tokyo Olympics, India won seven medals: one gold, two silver and four bronze.

The TOPS Core group are the ones ready for participation in the Olympics while the TOPS Development group are preparing for the future Olympics.

TOPS Core Group: 2020 Olympic

TOPS Development Group: 2020 Olympic

With such a special initiative by the SAI, we hope that all TOPS athletes make us proud at the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028.

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