Mahindra Scorpio TOISA: Inspirational Dattu Bhokanal adjudged Rower of the Year

MUMBAI: Rio Olympics inspiration Dattu Baban Bhokanal has been named the recipient of the TOISA Rower of the Year Award at the Mahindra Scorpio Times of India Awards function here on Monday, for his performance against the odds at last year's Summer Games where he was the only Indian rower to qualify, and that too just four years on from when he first picked up an oar.
The second edition of TOISA, which reward the best of Indian sport in 2016 and celebrate the future and golden past of the country's athletes, were pushed back a few months on account of the Rio Olympics. At the quadrennial Games, Bhokanal did the country proud despite not winning a medal as he finished fourth in the quarter-finals of the men's single sculls with a time of 6:54:96 to cover a distance of 2000m, little more than six seconds behind the third and last qualifier from the quarter-final four.
He finished 13th overall to end a touching story of one man's determination to succeed despite the odds. For Bhokanal to achieve this in his maiden Olympic Games, while his ailing mother lay in a Pune hospital, brain-damaged after an accident, was a huge achievement.
Just the ninth rower to represent India on the world's grandest sporting stage, the 24-year-old had won a silver medal at the FISA Asian and Oceania Olympic Qualification Regatta in South Korea with a timing of 7:07.49 seconds in the 2km course to seal his Olympic ticket.
"The only Indian to make the cut for the Rio Games, and then to finish just outside the top ten, is really an inspiration," said TOISA jury member Anju Bobby George, India's most decorated medal winner on the world athletic stage. "It is testament to his hard work and sheer dedication to what he wants to achieve. Dattu Baban Bhokanal is a hero for Indian rowing."