Athletics coach Ramakrishnan Gandhi was posthumously recommended for the Dronacharya award, along with seven others, on Saturday.
The awards committee, chaired by national badminton coach P. Gopi Chand, also recommended veteran footballer and administrator Syed Shahid Hakim for the Dhyan Chand award for lifetime achievement, along with Sumarai Tete for hockey and Bhupinder Singh for athletics.
Gandhi, who passed away last year, had been instrumental in training race walkers Gurmeet Singh, Baljinder Singh and Deepmala Devi.
Gurmeet had become the first Indian to win gold at the Asian race walking championships in Nomi, Japan, last year.
Also recommended for the Dronacharya was para-athletics coach Satyanarayana, who is credited with mentoring two Indian high-jumpers at the Paralympics — H.N. Girisha, who won silver at London 2012, and Thangavelu Mariyappan, who won gold in Rio last year.
Mariyappan has also been recommended for an Arjuna award this year.
Veteran badminton coach Gangula Prasad, who has also been Gopi Chand's coach, was also recommended for the Dronacharya.
Committee sources said Gopi had offered to recuse himself and not be part of either the deliberations or the decision on Prasad, since he had himself recommended the name.
But he was convinced to stay put by the others on the committee.
Meanwhile, names of Sakshi Malik’s coaches — Kuldeep Malik and Mandip Singh — were also discussed but both were eventually omitted for lack of any consensus on either name.
