TOPS athletes to get extra USD25 per day out-of-pocket allowance

New Delhi: The sports ministry’s Mission Olympic Cell (MOC) approved an additional USD 25 per day to the country’s Target Olympics Podium Scheme (TOPS) athletes in its recent review meeting held earlier this month.

The TOPS athletes, including core and development groups, are already entitled to Rs 50,000 and Rs 25,000 as out-of-pocket (OPA) allowance during the period of training and competition overseas. The move is in accordance with the ministry’s athlete-centric approach keeping in mind the 2026 Asian Games and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Earlier, there was no specific provision to provide financial support through OPA to TOPS athletes for the duration of training and competition.

The MOC, led by Sujata Chaturvedi, secretary of sports, also approved the provisioning of up to an additional 60 days of domestic and international training over and above the annual calendar for training and competition proposed by the National Sports Federations (NSFs).

This will ensure adequate exposure to athletes for training and competition in a calendar year.

Sports Ministry prunes TOPS list to 94

In addition, the sports ministry drastically pruned the TOPS core group by reducing the number of athletes to 94 from 179.

“Earlier there was a two-year performance evaluation period which has now been pruned to 12 months. During this time, we will access the performance graph of athletes and accordingly promote or relegate athletes in the core group. This is to ensure an athletic-centric approach and bring more transparency,” an official with the know-how of things told The Bridge on Saturday.

“The MOC has included 42 athletes in the core group and 112 in the development group. Similarly, for 11 para disciplines, 52 para-athletes were cleared for the TOPS core group,” the official informed.

The TOPS was introduced in 2014 with an aim to support Olympic hopefuls in training, international exposure, equipment, and coaching.