The National Hockey Stadium these days is undergoing hectic activity as around 50,000 youngsters of different ages are busy preparing for the opening ceremony of the Provincial Level of the world’s largest Punjab Youth Festival 2012.
The Provincial Level which is the final stage of the Punjab Youth Festival will have gathering of the winners of the entire province for competitions likely to start from October 18 while in between there will be Guinness World Record competitions.
The youngsters and volunteers of the Festival are preparing for the biggest mosaic and the largest human flag. During this course of time, more than 31 individual and mass participation events will be put up for Guinness World Record, the most prominent from among them are the largest cricket ball, maximum martial arts kicks in one minute and three minutes, maximum pushups in an hour etc. but it would be up to the Guinness World team to judge which are the trend setting events.
In the provincial Level there are 33 new events added for competitions while in all 256 events are to be contested in the next 10 days.
The Sports Board Punjab is conducting the entire activity in collaboration with Higher Education, School Education, Tevta, Punjab Information Technology Board, Agriculture, Auqaf, Information, Livestock and Dairy Development Departments, PHA, HUD and PHE, Punjab Small Industries, Population and Social Welfare and Tourism departments.
On Monday the prize distribution ceremony for the participation of the Pigeon Flying and Tippling competition was held at Live Stock and Dairy Development Department and Ilyas Khan, advisor to Chief Minister was the chief guest.
In the pigeon flying competition, Aqeel Bhatti of Bhatti Gate was the winner while Mohammad Ali Taddi of Sabzazar and Sohail Ansar Khan Arcade Society were second and third.
Meanwhile, the competition of maximum milk giving camels was also held at Bahawalpur in which the winners were awarded Rs 150,000, Rs 100,000 and Rs 75,000 respectively. Rao Abdul Qadeer’s camel was the winner.
In the morning, Salman Iqbal Butt, the main focal person for the assembling of the largest flag, mosaic and national anthem made the participants understand their position in the world record events and held practice session of the portions of flag and mosaic at the National Hockey Stadium.
After spending around two hours on the field, the heaven opened and brought the whole activity to a halt, which continued later in the evening when the skies cleared.
Festival baseball from 22nd
The Punjab Youth Festival Baseball competition will be played on knock out basis in between the nine divisions of the province. The Inter-Division Baseball Championship will be played from October 22 to 25 at Iqbal Park and the teams have ben divided into to two pools with Pool A having Multan, Lahore, Sargodha, Bahawalpur while Pool B got Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, sahiwal and Dera Ghazi Khan. Amir Imdad Bhatti has been named as the Director Tournament while Jamil Kamran id the Chief Umpire and Shah Muhammad Director Venue.