Former boxing coach Sandhu suggests Manoj Kumar’s brother for Dronacharya award

Former national boxing coach Gurbax Singh Sandhu has proposed two-time Commonwealth Games medal-winner Manoj Kumar’s personal coach and elder brother Rajesh Kumar Rajound for prestigious Dronacharya award this year.

The 37-year-old Rajound who is an AIBA 2-star coach played a crucial role in forming Olympian and Arjuna awardee Manoj’s career and currently employed to the top position in the Khelo India University Games boxing competition.

“I understand that the achievements of Rajesh Kumar as a boxing coach are more than enough to recommend him for the prestigious Dronacharya award in the category of a boxing coach,” Sandhu stated in his letter to sports minister Kiren Rijiju.

The former Asian Championship medalist said that his brother deserves the national acclaim.

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“What I am today is all because of him. I had a lot of bad phases in my boxing career and it was his efforts that I was able to pull through…our relation is like guru-shishya. He is nothing less than Dronacharya for me,” he said.

“It is a great honour for me that a coach like Sandhu sir found my credentials worthy enough to be recommended for the Dronacharya award. I have learnt a lot from him and he is the one who has changed the Indian boxing,” Rajound said while praising Sandhu.

This year, the Boxing Federation of India has nominated three coaches for the honours comprising chief women’s national coach Mohammed Ali Qamar and all the national sports awards are given away on August 29 every year on the birth anniversary of hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand.

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