OV Madhavan Nambiar, the 89-year-old former coach of track and field event athlete PT Usha, was awarded the Padma Shri award (the fourth highest civilian award) by the Indian government on Monday. Madhavan had remained Usha's personal coach all through her 14-year running career. He had earlier won a Dronacharya Award (for outstanding coaches in sports and games) in 1985.
Born in 1936, Madhavan had joined the Indian Air Force (IAF) in 1955, where he was a decathlon champion of the Air Force. In 1966, he became the coach for the Air Force Athletics team. He was appointed as a coach with the Kerala Sports Division in 1976. Madhavan spotted Usha when she had participated at an athletic event at the Sports Hostel in Kannur district of Kerala. She was 15 years old at the time.
For the next 14 years, Madhavan coached PT Usha for several track and field events across the world, including the Olympics.
Usha was 16 when she became the then youngest athlete representing India in the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. However, she did not qualify for the final. PT Usha won her first silver medal in 100-metre and 200-metre dash in the 1982 Asian Games. Madhavan then pushed the young athlete to take part in the 400 metres hurdles.
In the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984, Usha missed the Olympic bronze medal by one-hundredth of a second. She had gone on to win the 1986 Asian Games at Seoul, South Korea winning four golds and setting a record.
Madhavan had remained her personal coach all through Usha’s athletic career until she retired in 1990. He was vocal about the use of performance-enhancing drugs among Indian athletes and had pinned the blame on foreign coaches introducing Indian athletes to such drugs.
Others from Kerala who won the Padma Awards this year include singer KS Chithra, lyricist Kaithapram, General Medicine Doctor Dhananjay Diwakar Sagdeo, writer Balan Putheri and puppetry artist KK Ramachandra Pulavar.