Dattu seeks to change his hard-luck story

Rohit Mahajan

Rio de Janeiro, August 8

Sadly, due to several factors, but mainly due to our lack of sporting culture, we lack world-beating athletes. International media rarely get interested in Indian players’ sporting feats. The stories of our athletes are more about fighting and beating adversity to merely reach the Olympic Games.

Today was only the third day of competition, but the few Indian supporters we meet here are getting in the grip of a horrible feeling — that India could be returning to the barren days of the 1980s, when we won nothing at all for three Olympics in a row.

There’s a possibility that India may not win a single medal here; but we do have some hard-luck stories — the human angle stories, with emotional drama and suffering. We have pathos — athletes who are able to train only after their parents are able to borrow money from the village moneylender. We have bathos — the animosity among the tennis players, which is childish and ludicrous. Then there is Dattu Bhokanal, the rower, who is going through a life cycle of trouble. He grew up in a drought-ridden village of Maharashtra, and had a really rough life. This is the lot of a very large number of rural Indians; indeed, this is the lot of a very large number of Indian athletes, who get into sport mainly to escape poverty. Media love these stories — such stories make nice copy, though they sometime seem exploitative. Bhokanal’s story is being heard and retold in the western media, because it’s suitably tragic.

Ailing mother

Bhokanal’s mother was involved in an accident earlier this year, and she is in a very bad condition. To the troubled, more trouble comes in a torrent. That’s happened with Bhokanal. But his saviour has been the Army, and getting involved in rowing.

He reached the quarterfinals of the men’s singles sculls on Saturday, and he’s spent two days with his coach, Rajpaul Singh Mokha, to work out the strategies for the quarterfinals.

“The first day is usually a full rest day, and we did some light work on the rowing machine, to just get the blood flowing, some icing, and then just relaxed,” Mokha said. “Then today, we went out to get re-focussed on performing on Tuesday morning.”

When they’re training together, Mokha is driving in a motor boat right next to him, shooting his videos. “There’s not much to change at this stage, and we focus on execution and race plan,” says Mokha. “Your race strategy can change depending on the weather conditions.”

Singles sculls is very, very tough — the boat is unstable, very easy to flip over. You have to be extremely precise in your movements while you’re using an enormous amount of power of your body. Tomorrow, Mokha says, Bhokanal will face real competition; he’s ranked No. 19 and Mokha says that realistically, they are working towards finishing a few places higher than that here. It’s going to be very tough against some powerful rowers built like giants.

“You’re floating on water, and you’ve got oars that are moving,” concludes Mokha. “You’ve got to make the boat move at a terrific pace, and you’ve got to make sure you don’t go over.” Bhokanal and Mokha hope that he won’t go over, and perhaps there will come a day when he’d be famous internationally for winning international medals, rather than his tragic story.