Inaugural Beach Sprint nationals mark ‘winds’ of change in Indian rowing

Indian rowing began a new chapter with the successful conduct of the first Beach Sprint National championships at Dona Paula in Goa on Saturday (Feb 28, 2026).Services and Maharashtra topped the honours board with a gold and silver each while Karnataka was third with a gold and bronze. Andaman & Nicobar and Navy, too, bagged a gold each in the two-day competition that witnessed races in five events.
But the championships was beyond medals and numbers. With the Olympic movement trying to stay relevant and adding new events that resonate with Gen Next, coastal events have emerged as a popular segment for rowing.With coastal rowing featuring in the LA 2028 programme, India may in fact be late in getting started."Rowing needs eyeballs and beach sprint is going to be a crowd puller," said Balaji Maradappa, president of Rowing Federation of India, who met officials of World Rowing at their headquarters in Lausanne recently."It has lots of action, rowers have to run and jump on to the boat, go zig-zag into the sea, they will have to face the challenge of choppy waters and winds, unlike in flat waters."Then, come back to the shore, again run and press the buzzer. There will be music. This is the future of rowing."This has already been part of the World Championships. So we have to get going. Goa had hosted the National Games and the boats were lying idle," he added.Services' Ravi and Amrita Minj of Andaman & Nicobar, respectively, bagged the men's and women's solo titles. Navy's combination of Prabhakar Rajawat/Robin and the Maharashtra duo of Shivrani Kateria/Arushi Barar claimed the men's and women's double scull gold. Karnataka's Ekshith Sai and Manasa SM clinched the mixed double scull.The winners would be selected for a national camp and the Indian team would be selected from the group, informed Maradappa."For the first time the winners are being given a small prize money by the RFI. It is not much, but it is a start. This is going to be a special moment for the rowing fraternity," he said.Maradappa said that while the coastal rowing boats were as expensive as flat water boats, it was bound to make a difference."The cost factor is same. But India has a large coastal line. All the states are jumping into this. Tamil Nadu has identified Ramanathapuram, Andhra has Vizag, then there are Kerala and Odisha. Mumbai has Mazgaon. So this is a big opportunity for the states," he said.For long, the Army Rowing Node (ARN) has been the hub for the sport. For years, India's medals in international events have come from Services athletes. But the flip side was that the civilian athletes have not been able to match the standards.Coastal rowing could bridge the gap to some extent, especially with the advent of a high-performance director, Maradappa said. "Rowing will be getting a high-performance director for the first time. Other sports have had one, but rowing has not. And it is one of the biggest Olympic sports," he said."Once we get an HPD, the first thing we will ask him to do is a ‘gap analysis'. Earlier it used to be a couple of facilities. Now there is Bara Pani in Meghalaya, Ramgarh Lake in Gorakhpur, which is the constituency of Honourable UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. So now we have more facilities."The goal is how we can improve from grassroots. When that happens, all states will start to do well. There has to be a change."He said change was coming to the sport in other fronts as well."The Tamil Nadu government has offered jobs to seven rowers, who were medallists in senior national championships. This is a game-changer, because now more families will be willing to look at rowing."Meanwhile, international rowing will be returning to India later this year."In December, ARN will be hosting the Asian Junior championships. It is in recognition of ARN as the best training hub, for which they won the World Rowing award recently. It is the first time in nearly 20 years or more that India will be hosting an international rowing event," Maradappa said."ARN is also going to be World Rowing's Para continental hub," he added.