Why should we know of Bhavik Gandhi?

From his site:

Bhavik is attempting to row 3000 miles (5000 km) across the Atlantic Ocean From Spain To Antigua. He will row solo and unsupported, in a 23ft rowing boat, spending an estimated 90 days at sea.

If he succeeds, he will;

• be the first Asian to ever complete a solo ocean crossing
• break the existing record set by Emmanuel Coindre of France
• be the 32nd person to ever achieve a solo Atlantic crossing

Sadly, the Indian media has been completely ignoring Bhavik Gandhi. A quick google news search yields no results.

Debi Taylor from Australia emails me:

I was Googling around to see if I could find out some more information about a great Indian sportsman, Bhavik Gandhi who is currently rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and I believe is the very FIRST Indian EVER to do so! However, I found it disappointing that I have not see any articles on and Indian news wesbites or on blogs and was wondering why this is?

The Indian fans have shown inelastic demand for cricket in the past and no matter what happens, they follow cricket. The Indian media, as a result of it, keeps tracking cricket. So, the cricket team is hyped before the World Cup and even after a poor performance, it hogs the limelight with focus on Chappell one day, Tendulkar on the other. Despite being a huge sports fan and despite following sports news items, I didn’t even know regarding Bhavik Gandhi’s pursuit before Debi emailed me.

The Indian fan has to show an inclination to other sports and the viewership has to drop in the upcoming Indian cricket team’s tour of Bangladesh. Side by side, the media should try to make most of some thing like this.

The best site right now to follow Gandhi’s progress is Humanedgetech. Hopefully, we will hear more from the media on this in the near future and the Indian fan will show that he can think beyond cricket.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Adventure Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.