The first Khelo India Water Sports Festival (KIWSF) will take place at Srinagar’s famous Dal Lake. The greatest athletes from around the country will fight for 24 gold medals. The tournament will last three days, from August 21 to 23, and will have more than 400 competitors in rowing, canoeing, and kayaking, all of which are Olympic sports.
This festival is a new event on the growing Khelo India calendar. In 2025, the Khelo India Beach Games were also added in Diu. The Khelo Bharat Niti is a government program that aims to encourage sports and bring in tourists. Both events are part of this program.
A Meeting of the Best Athletes and Teams
The KIWSF has more than 400 athletes from 36 states and Union Territories taking part. There are 202 female athletes among the 409 competitors, which shows that the festival is committed to being open to everyone.
There won’t be any teams from Services competing, but the event is expected to feature a lot of strong competition between states. The biggest teams at the event are from Madhya Pradesh (44 athletes), Haryana (37 athletes), Odisha (34 athletes), and Kerala (33 athletes). Everyone will be watching them. On the other hand, Gujarat, Puducherry, and West Bengal will have the smallest teams.
Bilquis Mir, the tournament manager and a former World Cup canoeist, said that the course has been set up to meet international standards, which will provide for a high-quality competition.
Olympians and Future Champions
The event has brought in some of the best talent from all over the country, such as Arjun Lal Jat, who won a silver medal in the Asian Games and the Olympics. The 28-year-old Army rower from Delhi is one of the most popular people at the event. In the lightweight double sculls at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, Jat won a silver medal. He also competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He said he was excited because competitions like the KIWSF give athletes, especially those from Jammu and Kashmir, a chance to get national attention.
The people that took part in the event were chosen based on how well they did in recent national championships. The top 15 singles and doubles and the top eight fours from the Tehri nationals in November were the qualifiers for kayaking and canoeing. The best eight from the Bhopal nationals in March won their place in rowing.
Along with the medal events, the festival will also have three demonstration activities: water skiing, shikhara boat sprint, and dragon boat race. These will make the event even more exciting for spectators.