Bengaluru welcomes GAIL - The Fastest Indian, a talent hunt on a mission

The winners with Sharath Gayakwad

Bangalore, November 11th, 2014:

Heralding a new era in Indian athletics with the potential to produce Olympic-level sprinters, GAIL (India) Limited in association with Spoment today launched their 10th leg of ‘GAIL-The Fastest Indian’ here. The talent hunt has successfully passed through eight cities including Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Goa & Delhi; and will be carrying this momentum to more cities across the country in the next couple of weeks. More than 3000 students from 9 cities have participated till date.

This novel initiative is an attempt to find the next Milkha Singh for the country and is targeted at securing medals in athletics at Tokyo Olympics 2020. Legendary athlete ‘Padmashree’ Shri Milkha Singh, himself, is the principal mentor of this annual event. He will also provide his input and help in selecting and grooming potential winners.

Bangalore saw the hunt take off on a remarkable momentum at St. Johns Hospital Grounds in Koramangala in the presence of Paralympic swimmer – Sharath Gayakwad. Following the welcome speech for the participants and dignitaries, the event saw a huge display of talent as enthusiastic students were eager to show off their athletic abilities with a few runners quite literally losing their shoes.

The high spirited races were followed by the finals, which were held in the afternoon proceeding which the prize distribution commenced. The event concluded with great aplomb as the participating parents and students applauded the initiative of the project and deemed it as the need of the hour as a majority of talent in India goes unrecognized due to lack of such competitive platforms.

Commenting on the occasion Sharath Gayakwad said “It is great to see such enthusiastic students taking part in this talent hunt. I urge all participants to try and try until they succeed.”

GAIL-The Fastest Indian will identify, groom and develop champions who can win laurels for the country. Over the course of three months, GAIL-TFI talent hunt will conduct events across 19 cities reaching over 3,000 schools. Young boys and girls in the age group 12 to 14 years will get an opportunity to compete for the title of ‘GAIL-The Fastest Indian’. The Top 8 participants from across 19 cities in each category, based on their timings, shall qualify to take part in the National Finals on December 14, 2014 in Bengaluru.

The highlight of this initiative is that the winners of the finals will receive complete scholarship up to their post-graduation to focus on running and to motivate them. They would also receive specialized training from renowned national and international sports trainers.

Students willing to participate in GAIL-The Fastest Indian talent hunt can directly enroll themselves at www.thefastestindian.in and can get answers of all their queries by dialing at +91 9560121287.

The other partners who are making this dream possible include IFIM Business School (Academic partner) which is providing scholarships, Manipal Hospitals (Medical partner), sportskeeda.com (Digital media partner), Croma (Promotions partner), Fox Mandal (Knowledge partner), iCONGO (social justice partner), rightticket.in (Official partner), Yi (Out Reach partner) and Unibic (official cookie partner).

Here are the results from Bangalore.

100 Meters – Boys					100 Meters - Girls
Position	Name	Time			Position	Name	Time
First	Manu S	13.91			First	Chandramma	15.87
Second	Sarvagya	14.34			Second	Hemalatha	15.98
Third	Vaisakh	14.75			Third	Shabnam	18.30
200 Meters – Boys					200 Meters - Girls
Position	Name	Time			Position	Name	Time
First	Manu S	28.03			First	Hemalatha	32.69
Second	Vaishak	28.41			Second	Chandramma	35.19
Third	Likhith	29.86			Third	Anusha	39.67
400 Meters – Boys					400 Meters – Girls
Position	Name	Time			Position	Name	Time
First	Likhith	1.18.90			First	Hemalatha	1.22.50
Second	Harshith	1.24.59			Second	Chandramma	1.27.19
Third	Naseer	1.25.58			Third	Sahana R	1.47.48

Here is the schedule of the remaining events of GAIL – The Fastest Indian.

No	City	Date
1	Hyderabad	17-Nov-14
2	Guwahati	18-Nov-14
3	Mumbai	21-Nov-14
4	Patna	21-Nov-14
5	Lucknow	25-Nov-14
6	Ranchi	25-Nov-14
7	Banaras	28-Nov-14
8	Bhubaneswar	29-Nov-14
9	FINALS -Bangalore	Likely Date Dec 14th