Diljot Kaur and Suman Kaur won bronze at the Asian Rowing Cup in South Korea earlier this year, clocking 8:02.384 and earning qualification for the Asian Games. | Photo Credit: Siva Sankar A

The morning stillness around the water does not last long.

At the Inspire Institute of Sport’s (IIS) water sports facility in Vijayanagar, Karnataka, the day begins with the scrape of boats, the shuffle of oars and the careful rhythm of athletes carrying equipment down towards the lake. The water stretches for a little over two kilometres, enough for a full rowing course, and is framed by a landscape that feels far removed from the noise of Indian sport’s usual training centres.

On one side lies the expanse fed by the Tungabhadra system. Not far away is the Daroji Sloth Bear Sanctuary, the rugged scrubland giving the place a distinct stillness before the rowers disturb the surface.

Then the work starts.

The rowers arrive early, stretch, lift and move their boats carefully down the embankment. A double sculls boat weighs around 27kg. Larger boats can be considerably heavier. It is not the hardest part of their day, but it is the first reminder that in rowing, even before the race begins, the body is already at work.

Once on water, the athletes settle into repetition. Lap after lap, stroke after stroke, the morning session can stretch from 12 to 16km. A race is only 2000m, but the preparation for those few minutes is built on hours of controlled suffering.

India has known success in men’s rowing, much of it shaped by the Army Rowing Node in Pune, a system that has produced some of the country’s strongest international results. Women’s rowing, however, has had to build its pathway with far less depth and fewer comparable structures.

That is the gap IIS is now trying to address.

Its water sports training facility, which began functioning earlier this year, currently has around 20 women rowers. Already, two women’s boats training in this system have moved into the frame for the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games in Japan later this year: the women’s double sculls and the women’s coxless pair.

The distinction matters. In double sculls, each rower uses two oars, one in each hand, making rhythm, balance and blade work central to the boat’s movement. In the coxless pair, each rower has one oar. There is no coxswain to call rhythm or steer the boat, so trust becomes as important as power. One bad stroke can unsettle the boat; one lapse in timing can cost speed.

That is why the training here is not only about strength. It is about repetition, feel and the ability to read the boat in silence.

Nutritionist Natanya Bhatt says the demands of rowing are shaped by the length and intensity of the event. Over 2000m, the athletes need sustained energy, not just explosive power.

“Their energy demand is mostly carbohydrate. If it is race day, they are supposed to carbo-load one day prior. That is around 8-12g per kg of bodyweight of carbohydrate,” Natanya said. “The rowers here are aware of the nutrients their body needs and we ensure regular check-ups and tests to keep them on track.”

For the athletes, that support has begun to matter because the margins are tight. At the Asian level, India is not merely trying to participate in women’s rowing anymore. It is trying to stay in medal conversations.

Diljot Kaur understands what that shift means.

At the 2025 Asian Rowing Championships in Hai Phong, Vietnam, Diljot and Gurbani Kaur gave Indian women’s rowing a result it had waited 15 years for, winning silver in the lightweight coxless pair. It was India’s first women’s medal at the continental championships since 2010.

For Diljot, the result had been imagined before it happened.

“Even before taking part in the competition, I had decided that if I represented India, I would win a medal and come back,” Diljot told Sportstar. “I manifested it so much that it came true. We lost seven kilograms each for that race and eventually the race went well. With God’s support, we won.”

The journey to that podium had not been direct. Before rowing, Diljot was a hockey player. She shifted to Chandigarh in 2017 and was part of the Chandigarh hockey team. Her first real exposure to rowing came at Sukhna Lake during the final year of her B.A. degree. She represented Sri Guru Gobind Singh College in inter-college rowing and later joined IIS.

Rowing came late, but it stayed.

Now, at the IIS facility, she is training with Haryana’s Suman Devi in the women’s coxless pair. The pair won bronze at the Asian Rowing Cup in Chungju, South Korea, earlier this year, clocking 8:02.384 and earning qualification for the Asian Games.

In a coxless pair, there is nowhere to hide. The boat has only two athletes and no external voice guiding them. Every correction must come from within the partnership. The timing of the catch, the pressure through the drive, the finish, the recovery and the next stroke all have to arrive almost as one movement.

For Diljot and Suman, the Asian Rowing Cup medal was not the end point. It was a marker, a sign that India had a boat capable of competing at the continental level if the months before Aichi-Nagoya are used well.

The other Indian women’s boat that qualified in Chungju carries a different kind of story.

From Manipur’s troubled waters to the Asian Games course

Thangjam Priya Devi has been around rowing long enough to know that a boat does not move on strength alone. It moves when two athletes learn to feel the same rhythm.

In Chungju, Priya and Poonam found enough of that rhythm to win bronze in the women’s double sculls. Their time of 7:49.729 secured qualification for the 2026 Asian Games and gave Priya another chance at the continental stage after her Hangzhou appearance.

Priya, who comes from Moirang in Manipur’s Bishnupur district, had competed at the Hangzhou Asian Games when violence back home was still tearing through the State. She finished fifth in both the women’s four and women’s eight, but the result alone does not explain what she was carrying into that regatta.

Former Asian Games rower and India women’s team coach Narangam Lakshmi Devi has seen Priya from her sub-junior days in 2018. To her, Priya’s growth is not only a sporting story. It is also a story of training through scarcity and competing through anxiety.

“I have been seeing Priya Devi since her sub-junior competitions in 2018. One of the biggest challenges we have faced is that we do not have proper equipment in Manipur,” Lakshmi Devi said. “But she always wanted to win medals for the country, which she achieved at the Asian Rowing Cup this year.”

“There are just two centres in Manipur. One is in Bishnupur district and another is in Imphal. There is just one single sculls boat, one double sculls boat and one fours boat, and they are old,” Priya said. “Here at IIS, the facilities are really good. We have multiple new boats, and even when we are on water, we are monitored. Our data is later studied by the coaches so that we can improve.”

For Priya, that difference has been immediate. At IIS, the athlete no longer has to depend only on feel. A coach can look at stroke rate, rhythm, movement efficiency and how the boat is travelling through the water. The numbers tell their own story, and for a rower trying to shave seconds off a 2000m race, that kind of feedback can change everything.

But the hardest part of the last Asian Games cycle was not only technical.

During the Hangzhou Games, the ethnic violence in Manipur had reached places close to home. Lakshmi Devi recalls how difficult it was for Priya to separate racing from the fear carried through phone calls from Manipur.

“Priya Devi’s house was just kilometres away from where the violence was happening. There was a full lockdown when the Hangzhou Asian Games was happening,” Lakshmi Devi said. “We were in the India camp, so we were lucky in one way. But whenever a call came from home, she would get nervous. That affected her performance at the Asian Games as well.”

That context gives Priya’s 2026 qualification a different weight. She is not just returning to the Asian Games as a more experienced rower. She is returning after having lived through the emotional strain of representing India while her family was in a conflict zone.

In Chungju, Priya and Poonam finished second in the heats, a result that gave them confidence before the final.

“It was an important victory for us. We finished second in the heats and then we were confident about winning a medal,” Priya said. “On the day of the final, our coaches motivated us and we won bronze.”

Priya’s recent training indicators have also raised expectations. In training, she has touched times around the 7:22 mark, a sign that the double sculls boat has room to grow if the pair can carry that speed into race conditions.

That remains the challenge for all rowers: training water is not race water. Wind changes. Lanes differ. Pressure tightens the hands. The boat that feels smooth in practice can become heavy in a final. For India’s women, the next few months will be about taking the promise seen in training and holding it under continental pressure.

At IIS, that work continues away from attention.

The boats go out in the morning. The athletes return with tired shoulders and marked palms. Coaches look at the session. Nutrition plans are adjusted. Recovery is monitored. Then it begins again.

For Indian rowing, the larger story has often been shaped by the men, the Army system and a structure that has had time to mature. The women are still building that foundation, and the facility in Vijayanagar is an attempt to give them not just boats and water, but a system. At IIS, the work continues in quiet repetition: Diljot and Suman in the coxless pair, Priya and Poonam in the double sculls, two boats and four women trying to move Indian women’s rowing into a faster current before Aichi-Nagoya.

The water is quiet again when the session ends. But by then, it has already carried a small part of India’s Asian Games hope.

Published on May 10, 2026