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Question 173 of 325 · Sports
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Who was the first woman hockey player to receive the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award?

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Answer: Option A — Rani Rampal

Detailed Solution

Rani Rampal, the former captain of the Indian women's hockey team, received the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award (now called the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award) in 2020. She was the first woman hockey player to receive India's highest sporting honour. She shared the award that year with Rohit Sharma, Mariyappan Thangavelu, Manika Batra and Vinesh Phogat.

More about Rani Rampal:

  • She was born on 4 December 1994 in Shahabad Markanda, Haryana, in a poor family; her father pulled a cart for a living.
  • She joined the Indian national team at the age of 14 and played in the 2010 World Cup at 15, becoming the youngest player in that event.
  • She was named the best young player of the 2010 World Cup.
  • She captained India at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (held in 2021), where the women's team reached the semi-finals for the first time and finished fourth, India's best result in women's Olympic hockey.
  • In 2020, she became the first hockey player to win the World Games Athlete of the Year award.
  • She received the Arjuna Award (2016) and the Padma Shri (2020).
  • A hockey stadium in Rae Bareli was named "Rani's Girls Hockey Turf" in her honour.
  • She retired from international hockey in 2024.

Other hockey players who received the Khel Ratna:

  • Dhanraj Pillay (1999-2000), the first hockey player to receive it.
  • Sardar Singh (2017).
  • R. Sreejesh and Manpreet Singh (2021).
  • Harmanpreet Singh (2024).

About the Khel Ratna:

It was instituted in 1991-92 as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and renamed in 2021 after Major Dhyan Chand. The first recipient was chess player Viswanathan Anand.

Why not the other options?

  • ✗Savita Punia is the Indian women's team goalkeeper and a later captain; she received the Arjuna Award.
  • ✗Vandana Katariya scored a hat-trick at the Tokyo Olympics, the first by an Indian woman.
  • ✗Sushila Chanu is a former captain of the Indian women's team.

Quick tip

Remember: Rani Rampal = first woman hockey player to get the Khel Ratna (2020); captain of the 4th-placed Tokyo team; first hockey Khel Ratna = Dhanraj Pillay.

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Sports — Preparation

This question tests your understanding of Sports, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.

This topic covers sports GK: major tournaments and their venues, trophies and cups associated with each sport, sports terms, the number of players in a team, sports awards in India, Olympic and Asian Games facts, and famous sportspersons and their achievements. Common questions ask which sport a trophy belongs to (such as the Durand Cup for football or the Ranji Trophy for cricket), which term is used in which sport, and where a tournament was held. Records and results change after every season, so pair static facts such as team sizes and terms with recent results from current affairs. Practise the sports questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.

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