The Sports Board Punjab on Monday presented new racing cycles to the winners of the Cross Country Cycle Race of the Punjab Sports Festival 2011-12. Deputy Speaker Rana Mashood Ahmed Khan, who is the chief organizer of sports in the province and Usman Anwar, Director General Sports Board and Youth Affairs Punjab, gave away the cycles to Tariq Sunny Anwar and Fiza Riaz.
Rana Mashood said that the sports culture revived by the Punjab government will all have several event to be organized in February. “The Guinness World Record team will be here in February to declare the Punjab Youth Festival 2012 at the biggest event of the world while there are around 16 more world record attempts we intend to make to bring more records for Pakistan,” he added.
He further said that blue turf at the National Hockey Stadium is ready to use and the committee has given its recommendation. Now the Chief Minister Punjab Mian Shahbaz Sharif will be holding a meeting to announce the date of the turf’s inauguration and the forthcoming camp training of the national hockey team will also be held at the NHS blue desso turf.
He further siad that the winners of the Punjab Youth Festivcal will be given their prizes and awards during the closing cedremony of the festival whcih is likely to be held in March 2013.
The SBP organized the Punjab Sports Festival having a participation of around 1.2 million people throughout the province in which around 80 sports events were organsied at tehsil, district, division and provincial levels in the final provincial phase the winners of the lower levels moved to the final provincial level to show their skills in different sporting events. In the final provincial level 14 sports events were contested while the entire PSF was held from December 2011 and concluded in March 2012.
The final phase was held on February 27 to March 10, 2012 with the closing ceremony scheduled on the footsteps of Badshahi Masjid and Lahore Fort in which the winners of the festival were given awards while the cycle race winners were promised of new racing cycles and which were presented to them on Monday.
In the cycle race of the PSF around 150 cyclists contested the 22 kilometres race on racing cycle and about 60 contested on ordinary cycles and from among those participants Tariq Sunny Anwar came out as a winner with 24.04 minutes time while in the girls competition of 17 kilometres, about 45 females took part and the ultimate winner was Fiza Riaz who clocked 45 minutes.
The PSY was taken as the revival of sports culture in the province in which not only around 4000 grounds were recovered from the occupants and were facilitated for sports activities. It was the on the same line the record-setting Punjab Youth Festival 2012 was organized on the same grounds.
Rana Mashood said that the sports were revived in the province in accordance to the vision of Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif.
“The sports culture was once again revatilised in the province with the efforts of the SBP and the Punjab government. It was that base which helped us later in the creation of several Guinness World Records,” said Usman Anwar.
