Rowers of Calcutta Rowing Club will be trained on Sunday in survival tactics during boat capsize, an official of the club said.
The training session will be held in accordance with a standard operating procedure (SOP) for rowing that Kolkata police have prepared, club officials said.
The SOP has made it mandatory to organise periodic capsize drills. The police sent the SOP to the three rowing clubs on the Rabindra Sarobar premises on Wednesday.
The SOP also said rowers who attended the drill should be given a certificate. The clubs need to maintain in a register the names of the participants along with the person under whose supervision the drill was conducted.
“We have about 30 rowers in our club. All of them will participate in the training session. This is one of conditions mentioned in the SOP,” said Chandan Roy Chowdhury, secretary of Calcutta Rowing Club (CRC).
“Sib Sankar Basu, a FISA level II coach who holds a certificate for capsize and recovery training, will conduct the sessions,” said Roy Chowdhury.
The World Rowing Federation, the apex body for rowing across the world, was earlier known as FISA.
The session will be held in the swimming pool of the club. Since the police have barred all rowing activities till the full SOP is implemented, the club cannot conduct the training session in the Sarobar waters.
Two teenage rowers who were practising for a school regatta drowned in the Rabindra Sarobar during a squall on May 21. A boy who was on the same boat but survived had
said they did not know that a rowing boat could not drown. The schoolboys tried to swim back to the shore in the choppy waters thinking their boat would sink.
There were demands from several quarters that the authorities prepare a protocol to be followed during rowing.
Pratik Gupta, a rower who has represented India, said all rowers were taught how to survive a boat capsize. “A rower puts his feet inside shoes fixed to the boat. If a boat capsizes, the strings attached to the shoes automatically gets pulled and the feet comes out from the shoes,” said Gupta.
After that, the rowers should hold on to the boat because rowing boats are unsinkable, he said.
Bengal team selection
The selections for the Bengal teams for the Sub-Junior National Rowing Championships (U-13 and U-15 age groups) and the Inter-State Challenger National Rowing Championships were held at CRC on Friday.
“The selections were done on ergometer, an indoor rowing machine,” said Rajesh Agarwal, an official of Bengal Rowing Club.
