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Panwar was a novice at the international stage, navigating the pressure of donning the India colours at the continental games with barely any top-tier racing experience under his belt. Despite the odds, he fought valiantly at the Fuyang Water Centre to secure a fourth-place finish in men’s singles sculls, narrowly missing out on a podium.

Today, the narrative has changed. Having competed at the 2024 Paris Olympics in the same discipline, Panwar is no longer the backup plan. He, instead, is now shaping into one of India’s brightest medal prospects at the upcoming 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, having switched to a team event in quadruple sculls.

“I had been rowing for only about a year or a year-and-a-half during the last Asian Games,” Panwar told Readreflecting on his rapid rise in the sport.

“I had very little international experience at that time. It was only my second tournament, and as a rower, my skill level was also very low,” he added.

Fast forward to three years, and Panwar asserts that those days of inexperience and underconfidence are now behind him.

“It’s been three years, and now I have the experience of competing at the Olympic Games,” he said.

“I have the experience of other big championships, World Cups and my skills have improved. I have worked a lot on my strength and endurance, and the focus is on going from the fourth-place finish to number 1,” he added.

To convert that bitter fourth-place finish on debut to gold, Panwar’s training regimen has undergone a complete overhaul. Working out of the Army Rowing Node in Pune, the entire Indian squad is preparing under the aegis of coach Anthony Patterson, a veteran with over three decades of experience in the sport.

The entire squad, including Panwar, wake up at 5:00 am and are in the water for two-and-a-half hours from 5:30 am to 8:00 am.

“This time our training pattern is completely different under the foreign coach,” said Panwar in a media interaction felicitated by Sports Authority of India (SAI). “It has completely changed from our previous training program.”

“From our diet to mental health to biomechanics to practice, there’s an extra focus on everything,” he added.

His rise has also coincided with his introduction into the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS). The scheme helped Panwar acquire a GPS device, more famously called “SpeedCoach” in rowing circles.

“Just like how any car or vehicle has a meter to tell its speed, average, and all its data, similarly, in rowing, there is that speed coach,” explained Panwar.

“What the speed coach does is it tells us the distance, how many kilometers we have rowed, and with how much power we are rowing. This helps bring a lot more improvement in our craft,” he added.

With the 2026 Asian Games just months away, Panwar and the team have meticulously mapped out their next moves. They’ll next compete in two World Cups in Europe alongside some of the top rowers in the world before they embark on a month-long acclimatisation camp in Japan for the quadrennial event.

India has bagged only two gold medals in history in rowing, the last of which came eight years ago in 2018. Panwar wasn’t even rowing then. But coincidentally, it was also in men’s quadruple sculls – the event he is expected to feature in at the Aichi-Nagoya Games.

“The medals we missed out on last time, we will change their colour,” a confident Panwar signed off.