A do-or-die Olympic qualifying battle for Indian rowers: Coach

"Since it will be the last chance for the national squad to earn Olympics berths, the rowers have to give their best," Baig told IANS.

The qualification competition will be held in May in Tokyo.

Jakar Khan (single sculls), Arjun Lal Jat (double sculls), Arvind Singh (double sculls), and Suni Attri (single and double sculls) have been selected in the men's category while Khushpreet Kaur (single sculls), Vindhya Sankat (double sculls), Rukmani Dangi (double sculls), and Sona Keer (single and double sculls) will compete in the women's event.

Shantanu Kumar will compete in the Paralympic competition to be held from May 5-7 at Tokyo's Sea Forest Waterway course.

India last participated in the 2019 Asian Championship in Chungju, South Korea.

Since then India couldn't compete as there were no competitions in 2020 due to Covid, says Baig.

"For Tokyo qualification, the past results will not matter. Performance in the upcoming Asian Oceania competition will be taken into consideration for Olympic qualification," he said.

Baig said that the top five in the single sculls and top three in the double sculls will qualify for the Olympics. The Asian Oceania will be the first competition after a long gap. "For match practice we had internal competition on a regular basis," said the national coach.

What will be more challenging for India, says Baig, is that leading Asian countries like China, Thailand, Hong Kong and Korea will also be in race to win Tokyo Olympic quotas.

"Since the 2020 calendar was disrupted, several rowers from Asia couldn't compete and qualify for the Olympics. With top players competing in May there is a possibility of intense competition. If our rowers don't give more than 100 per cent then this time there wouldn't be any representation in the Olympics," the coach warned.

In the 2016 Rio Olympics, Dattu Bhokanal was the only Indian rower to have qualified, in the single sculls event. This time he didn't turn up for the selection trials held in the second week of March in Pune.

Baig said the men's team started training in October in Pune while the women's team is based in Bhopal. "It was an unprecedented situation last year. We don't know how the rowers from other countries trained in difficult times, but our players couldn't train on expected lines because of pandemic," said the coach.