Kudos to our Rowers

In this cricket crazy country, people often neglect or forget that there are other sports in India, where atheletes have achieved a lot more than our stupid "CRICKETERS". To name a few, let us take the example of SQUASH, where our Chennai girl Joshna Chinnappa has won numerous medals for our country; Chess, where our own VISHY(Viswanathan Anand) made our country proud by winning the World Chess Championship just some months ago, and tennis, where Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have consistenly been winning medals in doubles and mixed double events(Although they played with different partners, the trophies still count). There are many more examples, it is a pity that we fail to encourage other sports and often discourage aspiring atheletes.

The best example is the recently held MADRAS-COLOMBO Regatta.
Well, for many of you who don't know what a Regatta is; it is a type of event held in a sport called ROWING. For rowing, please visit this link.

The Madras-Colombo Regatta is an international rowing race event held between India and Srilanka, (to be more precise, it is between the Madras Boat Club and the Colombo Boat Club). Our rowers won seven out of the eight prestigious events held in this regatta and have regained this trophy after 10 years.

You might wonder why i am saying this suddenly? My major concern was the media exposure to this type of events, the day after this event happened, i browsed throght several newspapers to find atleast a one-liner detail about this event, and guess what even great dailies like the HINDU and the INDIAN EXPRESS didn't cover this event nor did they include any news, not even a one-liner. Now, lemme ask you people a question, is this Regatta not even worth a mention? When small clubs like Jolly Rovers, Mambalam Mosquitoes and even corporate teams have their scores mentioned in dailies? Then why this partiality. Yeah! This is just an event concerning two countries, but by encouraging these rowers, do we lose anything???

Anyways, have a look at the photos!!!


Madras Boat Club Fours Team after their victory over the Colombo Fours team. (You can spot the MRTS bridge in the background.)


The Madras Fours team rows to the starting point of the race; the starting point is the Kotturpuram bridge.
Team: Stroke- Rahul Baliga, 3-Charles Amolarpavaraj, 2-Sathish, Bow-James

The Race is on: Madras Boat Club Fours on the way to victory.


The Victorious Team with their oars: Starting from left: Rahul Baliga(National Champion in Sculling), Charles Amolarpavaraj, Cox(Don't know her name), Sathish, and James,(He happens to be the formal national champion and also the coach of the Madras Boat Club).


An EIGHTS boat on trial: The boat comprises of eight rowers and one cox(Non-rowing member and captain of the boat).


The Eights boat again: That is one hell of a boat to row!


The Double sculls team of Madras Boat Club.


Rowers relaxing after the race.


A Race begins???


Rahul Baliga, winners of the sculls event. He is the current national champion in Sculling and had won the gold in the recently held sculling events breaking the national record.


The Winning Pairs team of Madras Club: Rohit Ravindra and Tushar Bansal. These guys have won many trophies in the pairs events.


A woman sculler.


The Colombo Ladies Fours team

EK Champs

We have won the overall championship trophy in the Merchant and Bankers Regatta 2007.

Our 27 member team put up a disciplined and dedicated performance to win the much coveted trophy for which we had been waiting since 2004. It was a very satisfying victory since each of the team members had contributed vitally in terms of points.
We won in the following events:
First prize in Double sculls (We made a clean sweep by bagging the second and third places).
First Prize in Mixed Double Sculls (We made a clean sweep in this event as well).
Third prize in Men's fours
Second prize in Women's fours.
Third prize in Women's pairs.
Second and third prizes in Mixed Fours.

I am proud of my team members for various reasons. The main one being that when we initially started, only 5-7 members turned out for practice. Our captain, Solomon faced a lot of difficulties in finding people for the rowing team. To add to our woes, there were lot of projects pouring in and work had just started getting hectic.
But somehow, we managed to include members one by one. By the month of September, we had formed a 20+ member team. The first day of Regatta was not encouraging for us as we lost 4 races consecutively.
On the second day, we fared better as our team members started to win in different events. ON the fourth and fifth days, we won nearly 80% of the races. Finally, on Sep 29th, we won the championship.



Our winning team comprised of the following rowers: Solomon (Captain), Yogesh, Ranga, Sathish, Diiman, Ravi, Laxman, Tamizhselvi, Aswin, Adhitya, Arun, Nagendran, Rajesh, Ganesh, Santhosh, Vinodh, Nancy, Nanditha, Rithika, Reshma, Sonia, Gopal, Prabhu, Thiyagarajan, Thyagarajan Madhavan, & Anu



Note: Although i know that not many people would be interested in this post, i have written it for my own satisfaction. I was happy to be a part of a championship winning rowing team. Rowing has been truly a strenuous and exciting sport that tests your dedication, Patience, Determination and Stamina to the core. I loved this sport as it taught me a lot of things. More importantly, it required 2-2 1/2 months of intense practice. All of us had to sacrifice sleep, work for longer hours, practice on weekends, and exhaust our energy entirely. To sum it all, it was one of the happiest moments in my life.