Tokyo 2020 goal achieved, rowing coach Ismail Baig targets Asian Games

Ismail Baig, India’s chief national rowing coach, is satisfied. More or less. Arjun Lal Jat and Arvind Singh – whom he calls one of the best pairs he’s coached in his near-three decade career – repaid his faith with the best finish for India at the Olympics, achieving 11th place in the lightweight men’s double sculls at Tokyo 2020.

“I will not say I am 100 per cent satisfied. No coach can ever be fully satisfied,” Baig tells Olympics.com. “If a coach does get satisfied, that is not a good sign.

“Maybe 90 or 95 per cent, yes. Our performance was good. We did succeed as per our target.”

At Tokyo, Ismail Baig’s target was to qualify for the ‘B’ final, which determines positions 7 to 12.

After finishing fifth out of six teams in their heat, Arjun Lal Jat and Arvind Singh came in third out of six in the repechage round, ensuring India progressed to the semi-finals and were assured of at least a ‘B’ final spot.

Restricted to training in the calm waters of the Army Rowing Node in Pune because of the pandemic, this was a creditable finish for the Indians, especially given the much rougher conditions in the Sea Forest Waterway in the Tokyo Bay.

Arjun and Arvind had made the cut for the Tokyo Olympics at the same venue back in May during the Asia and Oceania Olympic Continental Qualification Regatta. So they knew what to expect during the Summer Games in August, and they also knew they could do little to specifically prepare for the Tokyo course.

“We could not travel anywhere to train because of the pandemic. We kept training at the Army Rowing Node,” Baig says.

“We had been to Tokyo during qualification. We had seen that the conditions were choppy, whereas it was absolutely smooth where we were training. We knew that was going to impact us.

“We thought of going to Portugal or even Bhopal or Hyderabad but most of the centres were closed during lockdown. We still managed decently, I would say.”

The primary goal for Arjun and Arvind was to be faster than Hong Kong in the Olympic qualifiers. Hong Kong had taken the gold at the 2019 Asian Rowing Championships, where the Indian pair had won silver.

“Hong Kong had been beating us for many years. It was important for us to defeat Hong Kong as they had beaten us at the Asian Championships as well as at the Asian Games,” says Baig.

“We thought that unless we beat Hong Kong we would not be in a position to qualify. And then we defeated them comfortably in qualification.”

India finished second behind Japan at the qualifiers and were nearly nine seconds faster than fifth-placed Hong Kong.

Top three in Tokyo 2020 repechage

At the Tokyo Olympics, India needed a top-three finish in their repechage race to make it to the semi-finals.

“We targeted Uzbekistan (during the repechage). They were ahead of us until 1200 metres, but we kept our cool and caught up with them around 1300m. We then rowed normally to go into the semi-finals.”

Uzbekistan had finished…