International Hockey Federation (FIH) president Dr Narinder Batra after visiting the Kalinga Stadium said, “Bhubaneswar is rightly the Sports Capital of India.”
“The stadium as I saw has come up as a world class stadium. The player’s asylum is best in the world. Other arrangements in the stadium are coming up with world class benchmarking standards,” Dr Batra said this in the Governing Body Committee meeting of Hockey World Cup-2018 held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary AP Padhi on Saturday.
Reviewing the progress of different scheduled works, Padhi directed the concerned departments and agencies to complete all works before the zero date. Padhi further directed to ensure healthy food and water and fire safety etc in the hotels and guest houses where the players are scheduled to stay.
Health and Tourism officers were asked to undertake safety and health standards check up each day in the hotels. It was decided to organise the stadium inauguration on October 10 with an exhibition match.
The international event would be marked with a plethora of sport and cultural happenings and memorials. On November 20, there would be lighting of Peace Flame at Dhauli and a march to the Kalinga Stadium. The grand opening ceremony of the World Cup would be on November 27 at the Kalinga Athletic Stadium.
The matches would be telecast live from the stadium through large LED screens at Puri sea beach, Janata Maidan, Ekamra Hat, KIIT, Unit-1 Market and Rourkela. Besides it would also be displayed through LED screens in different districts of the State. Trophy showcase canter would tour through different parts of Odisha with hockey stick to ‘measure the heartbeat’ from October 14 to November 14. Ekamra Sports Literary Fest would be organised on November 2 and 3. The City Festival would be jointly organised by the Department of Tourism and BDA. The festival would have the events like International Food Festival, Story Telling Festival, Music, Dance and Art Festivalson different dates during the World Cup.
Review showed that the infrastructure works like construction of new galleries, increase of seating capacity in existing galleries, fop lighting, relaying of two new turfs, construction of widening of internal roads and entry gates, development of parking space, running of new busses, city branding, landscaping and beautification , setting the wi-fi access pints etc are all on the schedule.
Notably, the world cup would be played from November 28 to December 16.
