Troubled waters for rowers as federation delays camp

PUNE: The simmering discontent between the Army's elite rowers and the Rowing Federation of India (RFI) seems to have boiled over with the latter delaying a preparatory camp for the upcoming Asian Championships and the 2016 Olympics.
The first stage of the camp was held in MarchApril at the College of Military Engineering here. The second stage was scheduled to begin from May 15."There is no sign of the camp so far. Ideally, the gap between two stages should not be more than 15 days, otherwise the fitness and performance levels of the athletes will come down," a source in the Army rowing fraternity told TOI. The RFI, which is yet to send a proposal to the Sports Authority of India (SAI), said it would conduct the camp in due course.
"We are not happy with the athletes fielded by the Ar my during the 35th National Games (held in Kerala in January-February). We don't think they fielded their best athletes," said CP Singh Deo, RFI's former president and a current executive committee member. After the National Games we conducted an assessment camp and found that the talent presented by the Services were substandard and unfit."
This assessment is at variance with the fact that the Services team, drawn from the Army Rowing Node, won eight gold and a bronze in 10 of the men's events in Kerala (the ARN doesn't train women athletes). Moreover, the medal-winning timings had only improved over the previous years. The core issue is questionable team selection for international events. The norm has been that the Indian team is picked from the medal winners at the national championships and the National Games. But the RFI allegedly deviates from this policy, combining rowers who are past their prime or simply lacking in merit.
For instance, the bronze-winning coxed eight team at the Incheon Asian Games had Sawan Kumar Kalkal, who won a medal as a junior, and Bajrang Lal Thakar, who won a gold in single scull in the previous edition but had rowed little on the bigger boat. The father of Mohammad Ahmed Ali, who was the team's cox, had a catering contract for camps in Hyderabad, sources alleged. "It means the team is carrying dead weight. A fraction of a second makes a big difference in rowing," said Captain (retired) Surender S Waldia, a 1990 Beijing bronze medalist.