New Delhi: Double Olympic-medallist shooter Manu Bhaker and teenage chess world champion D Gukesh received a euphoric round of applause as they walked up to receive the prestigious major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna from President Droupadi Murmu in a glittering National Sports Awards ceremony on Friday, January 17.
The other two recipients of the country’s highest sporting honour were men’s hockey captain Harmanpreet Singh and Paralympic gold-winning high jumper Praveen Kumar when the annual honours were bestowed at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
Harmanpreet was part of the national teams that won bronze medals in the Tokyo and Paris Olympics. Praveen, on the other hand, upgraded his silver medal in the Japanese capital to a gold medal last year in Paris. He was born with a short left leg.
Thirty-two athletes are being honoured with the Arjuna Award, out of which an unprecedented 17 are para-athletes.
The athletes selected for the Arjuna award include the Paris Olympics bronze medal-winning group of wrestlers Aman Sehrawat, shooters Swapnil Kusale and Sarabjot Singh, and the men’s hockey team players Jarmanpreet Singh, Sukhjeet Singh, Sanjay, and Abhishek.
This time, the para-athletes outnumbered the able-bodied ones in the list of Arjuna winners due to their magnificent Paris Paralympics performance, in which they returned with 29 medals, including seven gold and nine silver.
The 22-year-old Bhaker became independent India’s first athlete to win two medals in a single edition of the Olympics with her bronze-winning show in the 10m air pistol individual and 10m air pistol mixed team events in August last.
The 18-year-old Gukesh became the youngest world champion ever by beating China’s Ding Liren last month. He is only the second Indian after the great Viswanathan Anand to achieve this feat.
The annual honours are decided by a points system in which the maximum emphasis is on performances delivered at the Olympics and the World Championships.
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