In a bid to strengthen its contribution towards sports in India, HCL, a global conglomerate, on Tueday announced to extend its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), a not-for-profit foundation working on a mission to support Indian athletes at the Olympics.
With this partnership, HCL has committed Rs. 6 crores over the next five years to support athletes in their quest for Olympic medals.
Notably, HCL has been supporting OGQ since 2017 in its mission to help Indian athletes win Olympic gold medals. OGQ identifies emerging athletes, understands their training requirements and supports them in their training for the Olympics and Paralympics, which is done in close cooperation with Sports Authority of India (SAI), Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), Paralympic Committee of India (PCI) and various National Sports Federations (NSFs).
Towards this effort, HCL has already dispersed Rs. 6 crores to OGQ between 2017 and 2021. OGQ currently supports 256 athletes in the country. Out of these 83 are senior athletes, 116 are junior players and 57 are Para athletes.
At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics & Paralympics, 14 out of 26 total medal winners for India were supported by OGQ (4 in Olympics & 10 in Paralympics).
Speaking about the partnership, Sundar Mahalingam, President- Strategy at HCL Corporation said: “HCL believes in the power of collective – which helps not only in unlocking the potential of an individual – but communities at large. Sports as a category particularly interests us and we believe that several people must come together to assist our sportspeople in their mission to excel in their chosen sport and gain victory.”
“Our support to OGQ echoes this belief and we are proud to have played a small role in our athletes’ wonderful performance on international stage in the recent past,” he added.
On the other hand, Viren Rasquinha MD & CEO of OGQ said: “OGQ has been set up to look after the training of talented athletes with a mission to win Olympic gold medals. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian athletes performed exceedingly well and made the country proud at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics & Paralympics.”
“We are hopeful that with HCL’s support and OGQ’s commitment, we will be able to help Indian athletes during the upcoming mega-events including Olympics/Paralympics (2024), Commonwealth Games (2022) and Asian Games (2022) to secure many gold medals for the country,” he added.
Significantly, OGQ is a program of the Foundation for Promotion of Sports and Games, a Non-Profit (Section 8) Company founded by sporting legends Geet Sethi and Prakash Padukone with a mission to help Indian athletes win Olympic gold medals.
In the last 3 Olympics, at London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, the training of nine of the 15 medal winners for India was supported by OGQ. To ensure that all training requirements of the athletes are met and they train at a world-class levels, OGQ supports athletes in the several ways like Foreign & Domestic Coaching, World-Class Equipment, Exposure for Domestic & International Training and Tournaments, Sport Science Support (Physiotherapy, Nutrition, Strength & Conditioning, Psychology, Nutritional Supplements, Injury rehab, Medicines, Wheelchair & Prosthesis.