Darius Okello

About me

I started rowing on 21st October 2021. I never heard of rowing before, a friend just called me up and told me today we have a rowing Championship so come and try, I asked him what is rowing? He told me just come you will find out more when you get here. Yes I went and this is my story about rowing from that day.

My best memory from the sport was when I did a 2k in 8:02 had never seen a ergometer and no idea on what to do but to me I saw myself and I was like am muscular I can be the best here, so when the race started I brought in my 100m and 200m sprints into rowing, I started really fast and from just 500m I was off but whenever I could beep on to my opponent left and right, I see them moving and I kept on but interesting part was, after I finished I went down on the floor straight and guys removed there t-shirts to give me oxygen that part I can never forget.

⁠From then, I got my inspiration which was, Loving the sport after finding out that this Is a very challenging sport and the second thing that inspired me was the physical and mental challenge this is when I started pushing really hard through difficult workouts and the next thing was the mindset. I said to myself be it in practice or competition I need to give it all I have in order to achieve my goals so I train myself to be mentally tough.

As time goes on I found myself liking rowing more because rowing really showed me who I am, who I want to be and it introduced me to myself.  

After that I set up my goals and the first goal is being the best rower that I can possibly be while being nice, having lovely friends and family and to be flexible to ask from those who already have the experience in the sport to show me the way to achieve my goals.

The second goal that I set is , winning the Canadian Hensley one day, world cup, world Championship and then the biggest is going to the Olympics and I believe these goals will give me the direction and challenge to push beyond my limits.

Again I revised all these and find that I really need to have access to the environment with the equipment to boost my training in order to achieve these goals because training twice a week as our boathouse is accessible only on weekends Saturday and Sundays scares me sometimes because I feel is not enough to prepare one for a bigger competition and to put you ahead of the competition.  

The other thing that I would love to share is that, in 2022 October, I represented my country in the first African beach sprint that took place in Tunisia and concluded in the quarter finals then in 2023 October I again represented my country in the African Olympic qualifiers which was still in Tunisia and finished 4th in C final.

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