‘Khaki’ coach of para-badminton champs gets Dronacharya Award

Lucknow: Railway Protection Force commando Gaurav Khanna, who currently holds chief office superintendent post in Northern railway Lucknow, will receive the coveted Dronacharya Award — country’s top coaching honour — for his two-decade long service as coach in the field of para-badminton.

The 45-year-old cop has coached several medal winners at the international level. The award will be given by President Ram Nath Kovind via an online function from Rashtrapati Bhawan on August 29.

Khanna initially joined railways though sports quota in 1994, but in 1998 he was recruited in the RPF as a cop.

“I was good in sports, especially badminton. At the age of 19, I joined railway through sports quota and played my last nationals in 1998 at Udaipur and got injured. In 1998, I got selected as railway police officer. In 2000, I was transferred to Lucknow and started training hearing-impaired badminton players. I had to learn the sign language to communicate with players and subsequently became head national coach for deaf badminton team,” said Khanna, who was the head coach for Deaf Olympics 2009 in Taipei and 2013 Deaf Olympics in Bulgaria.

Later he became coach for the Asian continental team and coach for para-badminton in 2014 under Sports Authority of India. Khanna also coached para-badminton medallist and present district magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar, Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj. The DM is currently world No. 3 in the game’s singles format. “I wish him all the success and happiness for being conferred with country’s prestigious sports award. He was my coach in 2016 and helped me to get gold medal at Asia Championship held at Beijing, China,” said Yathiraj.

Currently, Khanna is building a team of para-badminton players for Tokyo Olympics in 2021. “I’m training three players who are also Arjuna awardees — Parul Parmar, the world No. 1 in para-badminton player, Pramod Bhagat and Manoj Sarcar. I’m confident that at least six players from India will qualify for the Olympics, including India’s youngest champion Palak Kohli and world No. 2 Krishna Nagar,” said Khanna, whose four-year tenure has seen para-badminton players bagging 314 international medals.

Khanna is training country’s best para-badminton player at Babu Banarasi Das University facility in Lucknow for the Olympics.

“States likes Haryana, Odisha, Telangana, Delhi have a policy for disabled players, but UP is yet to introduce one. If the government could encourage such players with government jobs and monetary remuneration more talent hidden in the country can be tapped. Sportsmen like IAS Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj are exceptions who got selected for government jobs by their merit and hard work.”