Pune: Rowing brought Subedar Narayana Konganpalle and Anita Choudhary together. They are off to Paris for the Paralympics , which started on Wednesday, in the mixed double scull category. They clocked 7:50:80 to finish first in the Asian qualifying championship in South Korea, the country’s first pair to achieve the feat.
The scullers are poles apart culturally, family backgrounds, thinking, and fitness. But their ‘fire in the belly’ to win laurels for the country motivates them to push their limits. As a team, they have been practising for hours at the Army rowing node in the College of Military Engineering in the last few months with a conviction to win a medal in the world’s biggest sports event.
Subedar Narayana has defied death to become an international rower. The thoughts of the young man from Peapully village in Nandyal district, about 300km from Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh never went as far as rowing. He dreamed of becoming a kabaddi player but joined Madras Engineering Group in 2007 in Bengaluru about 400km from his native place to support his family.
As a driver, Narayana was with units in the Northeast and Rajasthan before his post with the 54 Rashtriya Rifles battalion in 2013. A week before completing his tough tenure, he was sent to Nowshera sector in J&K for a special operation along with a member section (a group of 10 soldiers). We also published the following articles recently Countrys first mixed-double scullers ready to race for gold Subedar Nara.