Two months can be a long time in the world of sport.
Early July, Olympic combination Arjun Lal Jat and Arvind Singh had finished a lowly fourth in Final D — that’s third last among 24 boats — in World Cup 3 in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Sunday was redemption time for the oarsmen from the Army.
The duo, making their maiden appearance in Asian Games, finished second only to powerhouse China in the lightweight double scull to bring India’s first medal from Fuyang Water Sports Centre in Hangzhou.
Arjun and Arvind clocked 6 minutes 28.18 seconds to take the silver medal behind China’s Junjie Fan and Man, who came home five seconds ahead in 6:23.16.
Crucially, the Indians beat Uzebkistan’s Shakhzod Nurmatov and Sobirjon Safaroliyev (6:33.42), who had finished seven places ahead in Lucerne, by more than five seconds.
“Except for China, we have always beaten other teams. At the World Cup in Switzerland, everyone was mentioning Uzbekistan’s timing, but we had always beaten them and we beat them again today,” Arvind told TOI, his voice filled with pride.
It had to, since the spotlight was firmly on him as he was laid low by an injury in July, leading to a forgettable outing at the World Cup.
“We had a very bad performance in Switzerland. I was nursing a back pain and I couldn’t practice much before the event,” he said.
“The pressure was also on us to deliver after our good performance in the Olympics (in Tokyo in 2021). But we had two months to prepare after the World Cup and two months is a good time.
“I was also able to recover from the injury.
“Now it feels great to have a medal around the neck. We had a very good race. We (Arjun and him) had won gold at the Asian Championships but an Asian Games silver medal is way bigger than that.”
BRONZE LIKE GOLD FOR PAIRS
India’s two other medals came in the men’s eight and pairs.
But they were somewhat overshadowed by the tragic last-place finish in double scull. Satnam Singh and Parminder Singh were in silver medal position by the half-way mark of the 2km race before the former suffered cramps and the team just managed to finish the race.
Babu Lal Yadav and Lekh Ram timed 6:50.41 to finish behind the boats of Hong Kong (6:44.20) and Uzbekistan (6:48.11) to bag the pairs’ bronze.
The eights team of Neeraj (bow), Naresh Kalwaniya, Neetish Kumar, Charanjeet Singh, Jaswinder Singh, Bheem Singh, Punit Kumar, Ashish, Dhananjay Pande (coxswain) overcame a slow start to claim the silver in 5:43.01.
China took the gold in 5:40.17 and Indonesia (5:45.51) the bronze.
The Indians lagged Indonesia by nearly two seconds in the first 500 metres and by more than a second by the one-kilometre mark but powered ahead at the 1500-metre mark and came home 2.5 seconds in front.
“A coach can never be happy. If he is happy, that is his last day as a coach,” a proud Team India’s head coach Ismail Baig told TOI.
“Pressure is always more on the experienced teams. Whereas for unseeded teams, the pressure is less. The pairs did remarkably, this being their first major event. Bronze is like gold for them,” he summed up.
