Many ex-sport stars not willing to continue as coach for various reasons

The Uttar Pradesh government's ambitious plan to prepare future sport stars by roping in former Olympians and international stars in different disciplines for the training of GenNext seems to have 'backfired' as even before the expiry of their first three-year contract, a few of them have decided not to continue further due to a number of reasons.

- Sharad Deep

LUCKNOW:

Currently, there are 10 such former Olympians and Asian Games medallists, who have been appointed by the state government on a monthly perk of Rs 1.5 lakh. They include MP Singh, Mohd Shakeel, Syed Ali, Rajnish Mishra, RS Rawat, Ranjana Srivastava and Prem Maya (all in hockey), Vishwas and Sumangala (archery) and Shamsi Raza (football). The services of former international athlete Radhey Shyam as a coach ended last year.

The first reason is small but important interruption in their contracts as the Uttar Pradesh Sports Directorate recently chose to stop their remuneration for a month as it found that due to the closure of sports hostels and colleges as these former greats are not entitled for remuneration during the closure period. The second one is that local authorities allegedly give no respect to them, especially ad hoc coaches of respective disciplines.