It was a celebration of woman power in sports as Olympic stars PV Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Dipa Karmakar were conferred India’s highest sporting honour the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna along with shooter Jitu Rai in a gleaming awards ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi.
For the first time in the history of National Sports Awards, four athletes were chosen for the Khel Ratna honour, owing to the three girls’ superlative show at the Rio Olympics.
Shuttler Sindhu won a historic silver in the women’s singles, Sakshi won India’s first ever medal (bronze) in women’s wrestling while Dipa grabbed a piece of history for herself with a fourth place finish in artistic gymnastics with her now famous Produnova vault.
Shooter Jitu Rai was always a contender after consistently producing medal-winning performances in the last two years, including gold at the Asian and Commonwealth Games along with a silver at the World Championships.
The four Khel Ratnas, who were greeted with a loud round of applause when they walked up to receive their awards from President Pranab Mukherjee, received a medal, certificate and cash prize of Rs. 7.5 lakh each.Also honoured were 15 Arjuna awardees who received statuettes, certificates and award money of Rs.5 lakh each.
The list of Award Winners:
Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ranta 2016: PV Sindhu (badminton), Dipa Karmakar (gymnastics), Jitu Rai (shooting) and Sakshi Malik (wrestling).
Dronacharya Awards 2016: Nagapuri Ramesh (athletics), Sagar Mal Dhayal (boxing), Raj Kumar Sharma (cricket), Bishweshwar Nandi (gymnastics), S Pradeep Kumar (swimming, lifetime) and Mahabir Singh (wrestling, lifetime).
Arjuna Awards 2016: Rajat Chauhan (archery), Lalita Babar (athletics), Sourav Kothari (billiards and snooker), Shiva Thapa (boxing), Ajinkya Rahane (cricket), Subrata Paul (football), Rani (hockey), VR Raghunath (hockey), Gurpreet Singh (shooting), Apurvi Chandela (shooting), Soumyajit Ghosh (table tennis), Vinesh Phogat (wrestling), Amit Kumar (wrestling), Sandeep Singh Mann (para-athletics), Virender Singh (wrestling, deaf).
Dhyan Chand Award: Satti Geetha (athletics), Sylvanus Dung Dung (hockey), Rajendra Pralhad Shelke (rowing).
