Rower Swarn Singh leads charge as India bag two bronze in rowing
Just as he crossed the finish line, Swarn Singh Virk fell into the water and had to be rescued by the guards. He was taken to the ambulance, standing just a few meters away, for the precautionary check up.
As it turned out, he didn’t have any health issues. He was just exhausted after the 2000m single sculls race where he fought tooth and nail to secure a bronze medal on the last day of the rowing competition at the Chungju Tangeum lake International Rowing Centre here on Thursday.
Swarn, who is a Naik Subedar in Sikh Regiment, led the race for the first 1000m but was overtaken by Iran’s Mohsen Shadinaghadeh during the third quarter. And when he entered the fourth and last quarter, South Korea’s Kim Dongyong closed in on him.
Having already lost the first position, Swarn didn’t want to lose the second as well. He pushed as hard as he could. In the end, the Korean proved to be tougher and overtook Swarn when they were 200m away from the finishing line.
But the 24-year-old Swarn needed to be applauded for his efforts as he improved on his performance at the london Olympic Games two years ago clocking 7 minutes, 10.65 seconds against 7 mintues, 29.66.
“He is fine. He was just exhaustion. It happens sometimes,” Rowing Federation of India secretary general M V Sriram said.
“Considering that he was struck with severe back pain over the last three to six months, it was a brave effort,” he added.
The Punjab lad, who had come through the repêchage to be in the medal race, said he wasn’t thrilled to win the bronze.
“I tried hard and was even leading the race but couldn’t keep it (the lead) till the end. I am happy with the bronze but can’t say I am thrilled. I feel I would have done better had I not lost some training time due to the back problem I picked up a few months ago and could not train properly,” Swarn, the Asian Championships 2013 gold medalist, said.
later in the day, Indian men’s eights team also won bronze finishing behind winners China and runners-up Japan respectively.
The team comprising Kapil Sharma, Ranjit Singh, Bajrang lal Takhar (2010 single sculls gold medal winner), P U Robin, K Sawan Kumar, Mohammad Azad, Maninder Singh, Davinder Singh and Mohammed Ahmed started sluggishly to be trailing in fourth at the halfway stage before making the extra effort to secure the third place in 5 minutes, 51.84 seconds.
With Thursday’s two bronze, India finished with three bronze medals. They won one gold, three silver and one bronze in 2010 Guangzhou Games.