A deep dive into Indian rowing with Balraj Panwar, India’s only rowing representative at Paris Olympics 2024

Balraj Panwar’s athlete page on the official website of the Paris 2024 Olympics refers to him as the ‘MS Dhoni of Indian Rowing.’ The comparisons stem from the fact that Panwar, like the legendary Indian cricketer, exudes calm confidence. But the rower himself, while a little proud of being referred to alongside Dhoni, is quick to dismiss any comparisons, highlighting that he still has a lot to achieve to justify them.

“I feel a bit embarrassed each time I hear it because MS Dhoni is such a legendary sportsperson and I still have so much to do and achieve to even get close to that level,” Panwar told the Sports Gazette.

The 25-year-old Indian army man’s achievements at the highest level of his sport might not yet be comparable to Dhoni’s in cricket, but it would not be a stretch to call him the best Indian rower currently.
Hailing from Kaimla village in the North Indian state of Haryana, Panwar took to the sport only in 2020. Within four years, he became the only Indian rower who earned the right to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Panwar, who narrowly missed out on a bronze medal at the Asian Games in 2023, has had a rapid rise, which would not have been possible without the Indian Army.

The Indian Army’s immense contribution to rowing

Having grown up in a part of the country which sees a lot of army recruits, Panwar joined the army to be able to fend for his family after losing his father at a young age. He never gave rowing any thought until after a couple of years, when a coach urged him to give it a shot due to his six-foot-tall frame. He won the regatta in his army battalion on his first attempt and there was no looking back after that.

His initial success gave him the opportunity to be one of the few who train at the Army Rowing Node (ARN) in Pune, India, inarguably the best rowing facility in the country.

The ARN has world-class facilities, including a rowing channel and rowing equipment of international standard as well as state-of-the-art gym and recovery facilities. All of India’s best rowers, for many years now, have emerged through the ARN, and the facilities there combined with high-level coaching have played a huge role in Panwar representing India at the Olympics within just four years of sitting in a rowing boat and using an oar for the first time.

However, along with being the best rowing training centre in India, the ARN is also the only centre in India of that quality with an international competition standard rowing channel.

“The more such centres come up, the more we will see talented rowers emerge from various parts of the country,” Panwar, one of only five rowers who are currently part of India’s Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) and are training at the ARN, said. “There are other training centres for rowing in India but nothing of the quality of the army node.”

Panwar stresses that more high-quality centres, as well as better infrastructure and resources at existing centres outside the ARN and army facilities, are the need of the hour.

“We never had the kind of exposure to rowing before joining the army and that is still the case for young kids who are interested in the sport,” Panwar highlighted. “The equipment and facilities that the army has for rowing is unmatched in India. Athletes outside the army practice with very old boats and very rarely have exposure to the kind of channel in which we row our boats when training with the army. We have great coaches and our structure is also very strong. There is a lot of talent in India, they just need much better exposure and opportunities.”

Where Indian rowing stands on the global stage

Giving aspiring rowers those opportunities at a very young age will help them better develop as rowers and give them more experience, something that Panwar feels, based on his observations in Paris, is a key point of difference between himself and his colleagues, and the more successful rowers from other countries.

“The biggest difference is in strength,” he said when asked about his learnings from observing and competing alongside some of the best rowers in the world during the Olympics.

“Our rowing techniques are quite similar, I feel. But most international rowers from other more successful nations in the sport have been training for almost a decade, right from their junior days. Whereas we took to the sport only two or three years ago, which is why the gap in quality when competing is quite evident at the moment.”

Opportunities to train abroad more often are another important factor in bridging the gap, Panwar believes. Along with the experience of training with better equipment and in better rowing channels, among other things, he explains the problems often caused by excessive heat in India.

“The heart rate needs to be maintained well when rowing long distances and that becomes challenging when training in India because of the heat. So, in India, we struggle to complete 16km training sessions, while we can comfortably do 24km stretches when training abroad. There are so many useful experiences one can have when training in other parts of the world which can prove to be crucial in competitions at the biggest stage.”

Panwar competed in the Asian Games and the Olympics in the space of just 12 months, bringing home some great memories and ample learnings. While he is eager to inculcate some of the techniques and methods he picked up from other rowers into his own training and preparation, he is careful not to let go of the methods that have brought him success so far.

Paris 2024 experience and the road ahead

Another part of that Games experience is the games village and the opportunity to run into sporting legends casually strolling around the Olympic Village for instance.

“It felt great to meet some legends at the Olympic Village in Paris. I briefly met Rafael Nadal, but unfortunately could not click a picture with him since, as you can imagine, there was a huge crowd surrounding him wherever he went. I also met Noah Lyles,” Panwar reminisced.

His biggest inspiration, though, is fellow Indian and Tokyo Olympics gold medalist, javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra. “His career path and achievements are proof of how important consistency is at this level and I will strive to achieve the same.”

In Paris, Panwar reached the quarterfinals through repechage, where he fell out of the race for a medal, and eventually competed in the Final D race for positions 19-24. He consistently bettered his timings and showed solid improvement through his performances, but Panwar believes he could have done better in Paris. While a medal is undoubtedly the main goal, Panwar’s first task will be to break the quarterfinal barrier and become the first Indian rower ever to reach an Olympic semifinal in the singles event, come the Olympics in LA in 2028.

Will he once again be the only one attempting to do so? Panwar himself hopes that won’t be the case as the army continues to strive towards producing more Olympians. Hopefully, they get the required assistance.