The prestigious and honourable awards that are being given by the Government of India to the successful Coaches in various fields of sports is named as the "Dronacharya Award". This is such an award that a sportsperson can achieve only after the hard work of several years. There are quite a few numbers of sportspersons in India who did win this award. Here, a list of those successful sportspersons will be given according to the name of the sports that they represented in their life.

Starting from the game of Athletics, this very game has won more "Dronacharya Award" than all the other sports in India. In fact, this is the only field that has been producing some world-class athletes for India all the time. In the very first year when the award started its journey that is in the year of 1985, it was own by a great athletics Coach O.M. Nambiar. Though after his winning, the field of Athletics couldn`t win the award for quite a very long period of about 10 years, when it started to win again, it just dominated the list of the Awardees. In the year of 1994 Md. Ilyas Babar won the "Dronacharya Award". Shri Karan Singh followed him as he won the award in 1995. It was a two years gap again and then in the year of 1998, Bahadur Singh and Shri Hargobind Singh Sandhu became the joint winner of the award. Kenneth Owen Bosen won it in 1999 and after him Ms Renu Kohli and Jaswant Singh won the award jointly in the year of 2002. The last winner of this honourable award from the field of Athletics so far is Robert Bobby George who won it in 2003.

After the Athletics, Boxing has been the second most successful field of sport to win the "Dronacharya Award" so far. Om Prakash Bhardwaj was the first sportsperson from Boxing to win the award in the year of 1985. It was again won by a Boxing sportsperson in the year of 1998 after a huge gap of about 13 years when G.S. Sandhu won it and it was won by Late. Capt. Hawa Singh just in the following year. Anoop Kumar won the award in the year of 2003 and in 2005, Hony. Captain M. Venu won the award to become the last one so far from the field of Boxing.

Like the Athletics and Boxing, the game of Cricket has also produced quite a few numbers of "Dronacharya Award" winners. The game entered its name in the winner`s list in the year of 1986 when Desh Prem Azad won it. He was followed by Gurcharan Singh who won the award in 1987. The famous Cricket coach named Ramakant Achrekar became the winner of the award in the year of 1990. He is very famous among all the Cricket spectators as he presented the country the all time great cricketer so far in the name of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. It was quite a huge gap of 14 years here as well and in 2004, Sunita Sharma won it again for the game of Cricket.

Wrestling is another game that also has quite a few numbers of "Dronacharya Award" winners. It started its journey in the winners` list of the award in the year of 1985 like all the Athletics and Boxing when Bhalachandra Bhaskar Bhagat won the first award. In 1987, Guru Hanuman won the award and after a long gap Sukhchain Singh Cheema won it in 2003. Maha Singh Rao also became the winner in the year of 2005.

Hockey and Billiards are the other sports that will stay very close to the first four games in the winner`s list of the "Dronacharya Award". The game of Hockey first entered in the Awardees` list in the year of 2000 when Grudial Singh Bhangu won the award. After him, M. K. Kaushik and Rajinder Singh won the award consecutively in the years of 2002 and 2003. The famous game of Billiards and Snooker also has the same number of "Dronacharya Award" like the Hockey. In the year of 1996, Wilson Jones first won the award and after a gap of 5 years Michael Joseph Ferreira won it again in 2001. Then Arvind Savur became the winner in the year of 2004.

The game of Weightlifting also has the same number of "Dronacharya Award" winners like the Hockey and Billiards. It entered its name into the prestigious award`s list by the winning of Pal Singh Sandhu in 1996. In the year of 1999, Ajay Kumar Sirohi won it again and he was followed by Ms. Hansa Sharma who won it in 2000. All the other games except the ones that have been discussed so far, have almost the same sort of success as far as winning the "Dronacharya Award" is concerned. The games of Kabaddi and Volleyball have two winners of the award each. E. Prasad Rao won the award in 2002 for Kabaddi and the game has another winner of the award in the name of Balwan Singh who became the winner in the year of 2005. To talk about the game of Volleyball, A. Ramana Rao was the first award winner in Volleyball in 1990 and after him M. Shyam Sunder Rao won it again in the year of 1995.

Now coming to the sports that have only one representative in the winner`s list of the "Dronacharya Award". Amongst these sports, the game of football has its only winner in the name of Syed Naeemuddin who won it in the year of 1990. In Badminton, S. M. Arif won the award in 2000 and Prof. Sunny Thomas is the sole winner for Shooting in the year of 2001. The other sports like Chess has its winner in the year of 1986 in Raghunandan Vasant Gokhale and Cyrus Poncha won it for Squash in 2004. Phadke Gopal Purshottam is so far the only winner for Kho Kho in 2000 and Ismail Baig won it for Rowing in 2005. In the game of Yachting, Cdr. H. D. Motivala won the award in the year of 2002.

The names of the sports and sportspersons that have been discussed so far are the most prominent one in India. It is quite evident from the discussion that though the games like Athletics, Boxing, Hockey, Billiards, Cricket have the most of the "Dronacharya Award" winners so far, other sports also have their own contributions in the winners` list. So, it can be said that the ratio of winning the award among the sportspersons is quite balanced.
Dronacharya Award, 2007
R. D. SINGH-- Athletics/ Paraolympic games
Damodaran Chandralal -- boxing and
Koneru Ashok-- Chess