Until they joined Army, sports was not on the minds of these winners

An Express Investigation: For the last couple of months, 15 reporters gathered data about all of India’s Asian Games medallists in Hangzhou. The analysis provided a few clear-cut trends and some fascinating journeys of athletes that highlight those.

* 20: Number of medallists who are from Army backgrounds. Most took up a sport only after recruitment

Before he enlisted in the Indian army in 2016, Arvind Singh had never heard of the sport of rowing.

At the Hangzhou Asian Games, the 27-year-old Arvind combined with Arjun Lal Jat to bring home a silver medal in the lightweight double sculls event.

“I joined the army in 2016, following in my elder brother’s footsteps. Back then, I had never heard of the sport, let alone try it back home. When I enlisted in the army, a coach noticed my height and asked me to try out for the rowing team. Since then, I have been a rower,” recollects the six-foot-one-tall Arvind who hails from the Khabra village of Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district.

Just like the 27-year-old Arvind, who is currently a Subedar, all the other 16 rowers who returned from Hangzhou with a medal had never participated in the sport before they joined the army. Most of them come from farming families with no real link to any sport, much less a niche sport like rowing.

Unlike athletes in other disciplines, the rowers didn’t take up the sport as a pathway for a government or a public sector job. Their destinies as rowers were shaped after they had joined the army — at the Army Rowing Node in Pune, where they were handpicked based on physical attributes like their wiry and lanky frames.

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Besides the five medals (two silvers, three bronze and a couple of fourth-place finishes) that India won in rowing, two other Indian medallists from the Hangzhou 2023 contingent were also introduced to their discipline in the army: Avinash Sable, who claimed a men’s 3,000m steeplechase gold and a men’s 5,000m silver and Gulveer Singh, who won a bronze in the men’s 10,000metre race.

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