Water or land, Inderpal Singhs keep rowing

Indoor rowing, the fast-catching addition to every neighbourhood gymnasium, simulates a 2 km course on the rowing machine. It’s an all-strength event for rowers who line up on uniform custom-ergometers, timed electronically, and takes out the variables of oaring on water – choppy currents, winds, balancing the boat and sculling the smooth stroke.

Inderpal who recalls being a wide-eyed first-timer Olympian to Sydney and having followed that with the Asian indoor record next year in 2001, passed on the most central of pacing lessons to his son, that helped the teenager pip armyman Balwinder Singh, a far more powerful hulk, but lacking in rhythm.

“He told me that the 500m after the first 1000 metres is the most critical phase of a race – whether on a machine or on water, because that’s when tiredness hits. He learnt it gradually, but I was armed with his knowledge and paced myself to pick up power when everyone else is flagging. I was 4th at the 1km mark, then I raced ahead of others,” he remembers excitedly of the final.

Participants at the Asian Indoor Championships in Bangkok last weekend.

India picked 7 gold, 5 silvers and 1 bronze at the Asian event, including a men’s double from Parminder-Balwinder (6:13.3) and a bronze in the Mixed 4s, where Navneet Kaur, Inderpal’s 16-year-old daughter participated skipping her Class 10 boards.

“Now that she’s decided to focus on rowing and school is difficult because she must practice on water at 6.30 am everyday, I told her she can skip exams and clear 10th through Open School. Rowing is tough on both boys and girls, but my children know I am a strict coach first and then their father – even at home,” said the former sculler, who thanked the Army Rowing Node, CME, Pune and Rowing Federation for the juniors program.

Inderpal invested in an ergometer at home a month after son Parminder told him last year that he’s trading basketball for rowing. “The real target is winning on water,” the youngster, weighing 130 kg, and considered a prodigious talent by national coaches Ismail Baig and Jemil, says.

His splits of 1:35, 1:34, 1:32 and 1:31 caused a splash at the waterless event, as a festival crowd made of Thai elephant boat racers, trooped into the venue of indoor racing, and meter displays of the top-4 flashed Saudi Arabia 1, Pakistan 2 at the half-way mark. “The pressure and excitement builds up in indoor rowing because you can constantly see your and opponents’ timings on the screen, and my training of accelerating between 1000-1500 metres helped me go ahead of both,” he said. The last Asian record was in the name of China at 6:12.5.

Change in training regimen

Inderpal whose Olympics participation spawned a culture of rowing among youth of his native Yamunanagar in Haryana, including Jakarta Asiad medallist Rohit Kumar, has watched rowing undergo immense change in training.

“We just pumped power, now my children have different sessions for endurance, core and split-trainings,” he says, adding that he even dragged his wife to take to the waters, ensuring she trained and won an amateurs race last December. “She was a housewife and had limited herself to taking care of our diet. But after I bought an ergometer, she also started training,” he says.

At Bangkok though, Parminder followed coach Ismail’s advice to the T, and was set a target of 6:12. “He can go under 6 minutes (world record belongs to New Zealander at 5:38), but we are systematically targeting Olympics 2024,” Inderpal says.

Meantime, his eyes are fixed on the indoor simulator with its flashy gadgetry for metrics and smoother chains than the creaking ones he trained on two decades ago. And a son and daughter who could go one better on him at Olympics.