Dope-tainted weightlifting coach struck off Dronacharya Award list

The ghosts of the past have come back to haunt weightlifting coach Shyamala Shetty, whose name was omitted from the list of Dronacharya Award winners at the last moment.

The 1990 Beijing Asiad participant's name was discussed for the 'Lifetime Achievement' award category. The awards selection panel, headed by former badminton player Dipankar Bhattacharya, nominated the Bangalore-based coach, who participated in the 60 kg category at the continental event. However, at the very last moment, someone present in the meeting room recalled how Shetty was accused of doping.

The committee immediately asked the Sports Authority of India (SAI) officials to check her credentials with the Indian Weightlifting Federation (IWF) as Shetty had not disclosed about her doping past in the application form.

The IWF duly revealed that Shetty had, indeed, tested positive for a banned substance and was provisionally suspended by the national federation.

dna has learnt that Shetty was one of the four lifters caught for doping on the eve of Asian Weightlifting Championship in Indonesia back in 1991. Also, one of her trainees, Paritosh Upadhyaya, a junior male lifter, was also caught for doping.

The committee immediately struck off her name from the list and nominated athletics coach Harbans Singh.

Shetty, a junior team coach at the Sports Authority of India's Bangalore centre, had accompanied the Indian weightlifting contingent to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as coach in place of Anita Chanu. Shetty's appointment had generated quite a furore at the time as Chanu's name was dropped on the pretext that she couldn't speak English.

Meanwhile, the other candidate whose nomination was rejected by the awards committee was cricketer Virat Kohli's childhood coach, Raj Kumar Sharma.

Sharma had forwarded the application to the sports ministry on the grounds that he has produced a world-class player in Kohli, who is the Test skipper of the Indian team. However, the committee members did not show much interest in Sharma's credentials as they were of the view that the Delhi-based coach has not being consistently able to produce world-class cricketers like Kohli.

The committee recommended a total of five names for the Dronacharya Award, including three for lifetime achievement. Generally, a committee selects three names in the general category and two in the lifetime category.

But this time, the committee made an exception by recommending Nihar Amin (swimming), SR Singh (boxing) and Harbans (athletics) for lifetime achievement, in which credentials over a period of 20 years are taken into account.

Three-time national champion and wrestling coach Anoop Singh and Paralympics coach Naval Singh were recommended for the Dronacharya award on the basis of their performance for the period 2011-2014.

Anoop has guided top grapplers such as Sushil Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt, Bajrang and Amit Dahiya among others. The recommendations will now be sent to sports minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who will take the final decision. Only after he signs the file will the names be made public.