"...India has great excitement for Olympics": IOC President Thomas Bach

 The International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach is looking forward to the opening ceremony of the 141st session as it will showcase the excitement India has for the Olympics.

The 141st session of the IOC will begin on Sunday in Mumbai and while talking about the opening ceremony tomorrow, Bach during a press conference said, "We are waiting for tomorrow's opening ceremony as it will show that India has a great excitement for the Olympics."

Earlier this week, the IOC with the Olympic Museum aligned with Reliance Foundation to build on the success of the Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP) in India and signed a new cooperation agreement. This underscored the organizations' shared priority to promote Olympic values through sport among young people.

While talking about his visit to the Reliance Academy, Bach said, "I went to Reliance Academy with Neeta Ambani, she is president of the foundation. We saw what kind of programs they are conducting. We are working with Neeta Ambani's foundation and Abhinav Bindra's foundation. We have reached 27 million children in Maharashtra and 7 million in Odisha where Abhinav Bindra's foundation is working."

He also went on to highlight India's growing prowess in sports as they finished the 19th Asian Games with a record medal tally and said, "India has achieved a record number of medals in the recently concluded Asian Games."

IOC President Thomas Bach also spoke about the inclusion of Cricket in the 2028 Olympics and said that the IOC would work with the ICC to decide on the number of participating teams.

"Cricket is getting more popular all over the world and presently Cricket World Cup is being held in India successfully. So we look forward for cricket players to participate in the 2028 Olympics. Indian origin people play a lot of cricket and recently we organized a cricket tournament in Dallas too. Los Angeles had an opportunity for the same and they included it in the events " said Thomas Bach.

"We will work with the ICC as we do with all sports. We will not be working with individual cricket authorities of any nation. With co-operation from the ICC, we will see how we can make Cricket more popular. We are still in the proposal mode, the number of teams participating is still not clear yet." he added. (ANI)