Olympians Arjun Lal Jat and Arvind Singh replicated their Tokyo Games performance in light-weight men’s doubles sculls while the quartet of Jaswinder Singh, Bheem Singh, Punit Kumar and Ashish gave India its best result in the men’s four at the Rowing World Cup 1 in Belgrade, Serbia, on Sunday.
The coxless men’s four combination achieved a third place finish in Final B, meaning ninth overall, in the first of three World Cups in the rowing calendar.
Lal and Singh, after finishing second in the heats, came home fifth in the second semifinals, which saw them progress to Final B.
The Services duo ended up fifth, 11th overall, which was similar to their final placing in Tokyo last year.
Unlike the World Championships, the three World Cups have no cap on entries. As such, India had fielded two teams in the light-weight double sculls as well as the coxless four.
Arwinder Singh and Ajay Tyagi (India B) finished on top in Final C in light-weight doubles sculls while Jasveer Singh, Iqbal Singh, Neeraj and Charanjeet Singh settled for second place in Final C in coxless four.
Dushyant finished fifth in Final D in single scull. Ashish Phugat, Sukhjinder Singh, Jakar Khan and Sukhmeet Singh brought up the rear in Final B in quadruple sculls.
“We had originally planned to use this and World Cup 2 (Jun 17-19, Poland) as preparation for the Asian Games. Unfortunately, the Asiad has been postponed and the decision was made only a couple of weeks ago,” India head coach Ismail Baig said from Belgrade.
“As such we were not targeting medals. We wanted to get exposure because there are quite a few youngsters in the squad,” the Dronacharya awardee added.
