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Few Olympic Sports have flown, or rather floated under the radar in India, as much as rowing. With no real substantial achievements to show in terms of podium finishes at the Olympics, and with awareness for the sport being low, it is no real wonder that our rowers have never really been given the credit they deserve. However, the trend is changing with the country sending in nine athletes over the past five Olympic Games.
To put that in perspective, ZERO rowers represented the nation in the 104-year-old history of the Olympic Games till that point. This improvement and the phenomenal work put in by the Army Rowing Node at the College of Military Engineering in Pune has resulted in the sport being on an upward curve in the country. And these are the five men who have been at the forefront of this rise towards prominence. Presenting, in no particular order, the five greatest Indian rowers of all time.
Dattu Baban Bhokanal
India’s sole rowing representative at the Rio Olympic Games, Dattu Bhokanal’s is a story that would inspire any aspiring sportsperson in this country. Hailing from the drought-hit village of Talegaon, near Nashik in Maharashtra, Bhokanal became the sole bread winner of his family at a tender age, after the death of his father.
This tragedy forced the young man to join the Armed Forces, and it is there that he took up the sport of rowing. Interestingly, Bhokanal had to overcome an acute fear of water when he first tried the sculls. However, he soon mastered the sport and has had to never look back from his Army Rowing Node days.
The 25-year-old who’ll compete in the Men’s Singles Sculls category at Rio, qualified for the Games by winning silver at the FISA Asian and Oceania Olympic Qualification Regatta at Chung Ju in South Korea. As a result, he has become only the ninth ever Indian to qualify for the biggest stage of them all.
Sawarn Singh Virk
Another graduate of the Army Rowing Node, Pune, Sawarn Singh Virk, a native of Mansa in East Punjab, is one of the few Arjuna Award winners in rowing. Though the 26-year-old failed to qualify for the Rio Olympics, Virk left an indelible impression in the hearts of Indian sports enthusiasts by winning a bronze medal at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games.
Virk also represented the nation at the 2012 London Olympics at the young age of 22, where his discipline was the Men’s Single Sculls event. He even went one better than Bhokanal by winning Gold at the FISA Asian and Oceania Olympic Qualifying Regatta, and the similarities with Bhokanal do not end there.
Virk was also unaware of the sport until he joined the Army at the age of 18. The fact that he became an Olympic rower in less than four years from that point stands testament to his incredible grit and determination.
Bajrang Lal Takhar
Like Sawarn Singh Virk, Bajrang Lal Takhar was one of the very few Indian rowers to win the Arjuna Award. The nation’s fourth highest civilian award, Padma Shri, was also bestowed upon Takhar in 2013 – such is the standing of the man in the annals of Indian rowing.
India’s first ever individual rowing gold medallist at the Asian Games, Takhar created history in 2010 at Guangzhou, China, in the Men’s Singles Sculls event, thus erasing the heartbreak of being so near, yet so far, at the 2006 Doha Asian Games, where he won the silver medal.
Takhar won yet another Asian Games medal – bronze this time – at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games in the Men’s Eight event this time, thus underlining his versatility. He also represented the country at the 2008 Beijing Games. The Rajasthani is also a Subedar in the Rajputana Rifles Regiment of the Indian Army.
Kasam Khan
One-half of the Men’s Coxless Pairs Doubles event team that represented the nation at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Kasam Khan also has the distinction of being one among the two rowers who first represented the nation at the Olympic Games.
The Services man originally started out as a Coxless Fours rower, with his teammates being PT Paulose, Udaybir Singh and his Sydney Olympics teammate about whom more shall be described later. The transition from Coxless Fours to Coxless Pairs was made with ease however, as his rise to the biggest stage of them all proved.
One of the pioneers of Indian rowing, the Central Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports honoured him with the Arjuna Award in 2001, a year after he had made history at Sydney, and twenty years after Major Parveen Oberoy became the first ever Arjuna Award winning rower from the country.
Inderpal Singh
Few men have contributed as much to Indian rowing as the great Inderpal Singh. The first Indian rower to represent the nation at the Olympic Games – Sydney 2000, with Kasam Khan – the former rower turned coach is nurturing young soldiers at the Army Rowing Node today.
The 2002 Arjuna Award winner and Coxless Pairs rower, a 2004 SAF Games Gold Medallist in the event along with Jenil Krishnan, currently oversees the training of more than 60 athletes at the Army Rowing Node, with some of his biggest protégés including Narsa Ram, Nayab Rasool, Dushyant Singh and Bhagwan Singh.
Coaching the athletes along with Rajpal Singh Mokha and ARN in-charge Colonel Charan Singh Baswana, the Olympian imparts his valuable experience to budding rowers, in addition to putting them through rigorous scientific regimes.
