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Landmine blast survivor Narayana Konganapalle and accident amputee Anita, who met by chance and won a silver medal in para rowing at the Asian Para Games, now look to the Paris Paralympics 2024 with hope. read more
 "The story of landmine blast survivor Narayana and accident amputee Anita")
Narayana Konganapalle and Anita will be first rowers from India to take part in Paralympics. Image: Narendra Modi on X
The story of every para-athlete involves physical and mental challenges, the fight for social acceptance, and overcoming incredible odds. For Narayana Konganapalle, a landmine blast survivor, and Anita, an accident amputee, who will represent India at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, their journey is also a tale of fate and chance.
Narayana and Anita will combine to take part in the PR3 mixed double sculls in para-rowing in Paris. This will be the first time India participates in rowing at the Paralympics, in a new boat class.
Narayana, who hails from Andhra Pradesh has been into competitive rowing since 2018, but his partnership with Anita began only in 2022 after he was forced to look for a female teammate due to the programme for the 2023 Asian Games and 2024 Paralympics where PR3 men’s pair event was not included, but PR3 mixed doubles was given space.
PR3 is a category for rowers who have functional use of their leg(s), trunk, and arm(s) for rowing and who can utilize the sliding seat.
Narayana had earlier won bronze at World Rowing Cup II in Poland in 2022 with his partner Kuldeep Singh but now he needed a change. The only problem: there were not many female para-rowers at the his training centre Army Rowing Node (ARN) in Pune.
Then one day in 2022, at the Artificial Limb Centre in Pune, an institution run by the Indian Army, Narayana met Anita and approached her to become his rowing partner. An unsuspecting Anita had no idea what rowing as a sport entailed.
“I was visiting the Artifical Limb Centre where I met Anita and I told her that in 10 months there is an Asian Para Games and if you are interested you can take part,” Narayana tells Firstpost. “She wasn’t aware of the sport, so I briefed her about the details and while she was ready, she told me that we would have to get permission from her family with whom she lived in Rajasthan.”
While Narayana was desperate to find the right partner, with his hopes for the Asian Para Games and Paralympics looking bleak, for Anita, it was an opportunity to turn a new page in her life.
“After my accident, I completed my graduation and was preparing for competitive exams. I used to come to Pune to make my artificial limb, where I met Narayana sir. He approached me at the center,” Anita reveals to Firstpost. “I wasn’t aware of the sport but still I showed interest. I actually learnt about the sport from YouTube after Narayana sir approached me and felt that I could do it. Then I December we started practicing.”
The new beginnings
The chance meeting between Narayana and Anita ignited a shared dream, as coach Mohammad Azad, a former silver medallist in the Asian Championships, quickly contacted Narayana’s father, who is also in the Indian Army. With some persuasion and special support from the Indian Army, things began to fall into place.
“Her (Anita) parents eventually agreed. But staying for her was a problem, so Army Rowing Node head Col. R Ramakrishna helped his father, who is in the army, to get transferred to Pune so that she could move to Pune. This is how our partnership began,” Narayana recalls.
An even bigger challenge than shifting base to a new city for Anita was quickly learning the trick of the trade with less than one year to go for the Asian Para Games.
“I didn’t know anything about the sport at the beginning. It was tough. My practice started on 20 December 2022. We started with strength training, ergometer, and swimming. After one month, I started rowing under the guidance of Narayana sir and Azad sir,” tells Anita.
The immediate result of this hard work?
Anita and Narayana combined for a silver medal at the Asian Para Games in October 2023 with a timing of 8:50.71.
Incredible, isn’t it? Just 10 months after a chance meeting, both Anita and Narayana became silver medallists at Asia’s top sporting competition. Yet, their journey of bouncing back from cruel adversity and rediscovering meaning in life is even more remarkable.
The story of comebacks
Rowing was never on Anita’s radar. As a first-year college student, her focus was entirely on completing her education and landing a government job, just like her father. However, on a fateful day in 2013, 17-year-old Anita slipped from a train and was involved in a painful accident that led to the amputation of her left leg.
For Narayana, who gave up his love for football and kabaddi to become the family breadwinner and joined the army in 2007, tragedy struck in 2016 when a landmine blast during his posting in Jammu resulted in the loss of his left foot.
“I lost my left foot. I was in a hospital in Udhampur for four-five months from where I came to Pune for an artificial limb. Col. Gaurav Dutta asked me to take up para sports and motivated me…In 2016-17, I took part in javelin throw but I was facing problems in running. In 2018 he asked me again to come back as rowing was getting added to Para Games. I started rowing in 2018,” Narayana shares.
“Indonesia did not have rowing in the 2018 Games so I did not take part but I kept practicing at the Army Rowing Node. They gave me all the facilities and asked me to keep trying for future events. The Rowing Federation of India also supported us. They sent us to Poland for the first international event in 2019. Kuldeep Singh and I won the bronze medal. In 2019 in South Korea, we won bronze. We did well internationally.”
A new meaning to life
It’s not just about the medal; rowing and sports in general have given new meaning to the lives of Narayana and Anita. From a time when Narayana hid his accident from his family out of fear that they couldn’t handle the news, to now aiming for a Paralympic medal, life has come a long way.
“Sports has elevated my life to a different level. My landmine accident happened a few months after my marriage. I felt my life was finished. Throughout my life, I will be restricted to one place or be forced to walk with help. I wasn’t even aware of artificial limbs but my doctor guided me on this and explained how people in worse situations than me are leading a normal life,” Narayana reveals.
“I didn’t inform my home about my accident for the first seven months. I didn’t visit my house as well for the first 11 months and only went home after building my artificial limb. My family members would have been very worried had they got to know about my loss. So I decided not to inform them. But rowing has helped me come out from all the difficulties and given a new meaning to my life.”
Preparation and expectation
Having already fought tough battles in life, Narayana and Anita are now determined to give their best at the Paralympics. They qualified after winning the Asian qualifying championship with a time of 7:50.80, a significant improvement from their 8:50.71 timing at the Asian Para Games.
Explaining his event, Narayana shares that PR3 sculls events are not much different from regular rowing races and that the duo has been giving their best both in the water and the gym.
“We train with able-bodied rowers and I never feel that I am disabled in any way. In the PR3 category, we use the same boat as normal rowers and we have to race for 2kms. Our training is also similar, the normal rowers do 18km rowing in the morning, and we do around 14-16km, not much less. In the gym, we use an ergometer, the rowing machine, in which the normal rowers train for 30-45 minutes, we also do the same, maybe sometimes in batches. Our training is no different.”
Talking about their plans for the Paralympics, Narayana says they have achieved a timing of 7:40 in the training and will look to do even better in Paris.
“We have achieved a timing of 7:40 in training. We hope to do better than that and then we can hope for a medal,” he signs off.
Watching sports and writing about it are my favourite things in life and I try to bring you the best from the sporting world at Firstpost. see more
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