India emerges champion in the first International School Indoor Rowing
Kolkata: India emerged as champions bagging 16 golds, 13 silvers and 12 bronzes as the first WYCH-ELM International School Indoor Rowing Campionship organised by Bengal Water Sports concluded at Khudiram Anushilan Kendra here Wednesday night.
Bangladesh finished second with 3 golds, 5 silvers and 5 bronzes and were followed by Nepal winning 1 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze while China earned one silver.
More than 1100 students, both boys and girls took part in this meet, sponsored by city based Sportsalay, a technology based full service sports facility and mentorship organisation.
These students have qualified for the final rounds here after preliminary rounds where a total of more than 75,000 school students, both boys and girls, from different states of India and neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and China participated in the past one year.
The championsip also included events for the specially abled students.
Among the Indian states West Bengal garnered maximum four golds, 2 silvers and three bronzes and were followed by Punjab ( 3- 4-1), Boys Sports, Army ( 3 -3-2), Maharashtra ( 3-3-2) , Haryana ( 2-1-1), Chandigarh (1-0–3) and Odisha ( 0-1-0 ).
Indoor Rowing is a comparatively new sport and gaining popularity all over the world. It is a simulated condition like that of rowing without oars and is being held indoor on hard surface instead of a water body.
President of the Asian Rowing Federation Admiral Chainarong Charoenruk , who along with Secretary General of Asian Rowing Federation (ARF) Rear Admiral Prapampongs Pochanasomburana , Secretary General of Rowing Federation of India (RFI) Girish Phadnis, former secretary of RFI Subrata Dutta, Rowing dignitaries from Bangladesh, Nepal, Representative from the Chinese Consulate here, various officials of West Bengal Rowing Association and other veteran oarsmen of the country were present during this two-day meet.
Speaking at the closing function Admiral Chainarong praised the efforts of Bengal Water Sports in organising this championship. The Admiral said he was very impressed with so many school children participating in this competition. He hoped India would soon come up further in Asian rowing and assured ARF’s help for popularising this event further .
Thanking all the participants and all the rowing dignitaries in the competition, President of the championship Committee veteran oarsman Shakil Ahmed said the idea behind organizing this mega championship from last one year was to make young children aware about sports through Indoor Rowing, as it is an injury free sport and take very less time to learn besides helping to promote team work and leadership amongst them. Shakil said “ I am happy that we have been able to achieve that with grand success.
Following is the medal Tally
Gold Silver Bronze
India 16 13 12
Bangladesh. 3 5 5
Nepal. 1 1 3
China. 0 1 0
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.