The Indian Vikings nobody watched
Watching their own sport go viral, care of a Norwegian football celebration, cracked Ujjwal Kumar Singh and his teammate Lakshay up. The Viking Row craze had swept Europe well before Erling Haaland’s men scalped Brazil at the World Cup, and India’s own version of it had already gone into the history books a little more quietly. “We watched the Viking Row videos, and it was great to see them go viral,” Ujjwal said. “Unfortunately, when we row on water, we are almost collapsing by the end of the race to scream chants!” He laughed at the thought, no synced chants, no battleship backdrop, just two exhausted men crossing a finish line. That finish line came at the World Rowing Cup 3 in Lucerne this June, where Ujjwal and Lakshay, a lightweight double sculls pair, rowed to gold in 6:26.09, a time that put two boats behind them no Indian crew had ever beaten before: Hong Kong, the dominant force in Asian rowing, and the Netherlands, India’s first European scalp. It sets up a rivalry to …
