Chess player PADMINI ROUT with the BIJU PATNAIK SPORTS AWARD. Picture by SANJIB

Bhubaneswar, March 6: Chess player Padmini Rout achieved her Woman International Master title in 2007, but the pat on the back from the state government came only on Saturday, more than three years after her achievement. Receiving the state sports award from the chief minister, cheered the teenager and just like all the other awardees, she seemed to believe “better late than never”.

Like Padmini, sprinter Srabani Nanda achieved the rare feat of double golds at both the National Junior Athletic Championship and National Inter Zonal Junior Athletic Championship in 2008. She, too, got the outstanding sportsperson award for 2008 at the function on Saturday. “My daughter is in Australia for training. She is glad to have received the award. Her efforts were recognised and that is enough for us,” said Srabani’s mother Subhasini Raiguru.

The annual Biju Patnaik Sports Awards, initiated in 2001, was last distributed in 2007. But the awards ceremony for 2007, though announced the same year, was not held following a controversy over the nomination of sports journalists in the roll of honour. In 2008, a fresh controversy was sparked off when the government asked sportspersons to apply for the awards. Sportspersons, however, insisted that the government should decide whom to honour. The officials of state sports department took their own time to settle the controversies and the award ceremonies for 2007, 2008 and 2009 could not be held.

“Though the announcement for the award was made four years back, it felt good to receive the award along with other achievers in different sports,” said 16-year-old Padmini, who is busy preparing for her Plus II examination this year.

But winner of the lifetime achievement award for 2007, prominent athlete Usharani Mishra, who had won 20 gold medals in national and international meets in her career, has a different opinion.

“I am happy to have finally received the award. But I have to say I’m not as excited as I would have been had I received the award in 2007,” she said. “A delay of three years takes a lot of patience,” she added.

Lifetime achievement award winner for 2008, well-known long jumper Hemant Kumar Patel, said: “Sportspersons have not been encouraged as strongly in the state as one would expect. But the awards are a wonderful gesture of the government towards the sport fraternity.”

He added: “Of course, delays mar the pleasure of awards to some extent. Nevertheless, I’m glad to have received the award.”