A total of 148 athletes, including 20 new inductees, in seven Olympic disciplines and six Paralympic disciplines have been identified for support under the Target Olympic Podium Scheme.
About the Scheme:
In order to improve India’s performance at Olympics and Paralympics, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports started the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) in September 2014.
This was revamped in April 2018 to have a technical support team for managing the TOPS athletes and providing holistic support.
It provides support forOlympic Games and Paralympic Games including foreign training, international competition, equipment and coaching camp besides monthly stipend of Rs.50,000/- for each athlete.
Target is high priority category of sports discipline has been identified to put focus on and incentivize those sports disciplines played in the Olympics in
It covers the junior and sub-junior athletes also.
It is a dynamic exercise, wherein review of performance is done periodically fixing targets and intermediate milestones for individual athletes; and the sportspersons who fail to achieve the targets despite providing additional support and adequate time are dropped from the scheme.
