NEW DELHI // The skier Himanshu Thakur had been training hard for next month’s Sochi Winter Olympics when he received the terrible news that he would not be allowed to participate under the Indian tricolour.
Instead, he and two compatriots would have to participate under the independent flag of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The news came precisely a month before the Sochi Games and shattered Thakur, 20, who was training in Iran at the time.
“My enthusiasm for the Olympics has taken such a hit,” he told The National after he returned to India. “The whole point is to represent your country and take pride in it. And now that point is lost.”
The IOC revoked the membership of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) in December 2012, for not following the Olympic charter in conducting its internal elections and for electing officials who faced corruption charges.
The IOA amended its constitution last month and scheduled fresh elections for February 9 – a positive development, but not soon enough for its membership to be reinstated.
The embarrassment only compounds the difficulties of India’s winter sport athletes. In a country where most people experience weather ranging from mild to hot, disciplines such as Alpine skiing and luge are not well recognised.
“It’s unfortunately true,” said Abhijeet Kulkarni, the general manager for operations at the Lakshya Institute, an NGO that develops sports India, “that in India, they just don’t take the Winter Olympics seriously.”
“You really have to feel sorry for these guys, when something like this happens,” Mr Kulkarni added.
Skiing in India is mostly restricted to the slopes in the country’s northern states, where the sport’s infrastructure is frequently poor. As a result, India has fared poorly in the winter Olympics. Not one of the dozen athletes to have represented India in eight winter Games has ever won a medal.
Thakur grew up in one of India’s top skiing destinations, the northern hill town of Manali, but only took up the sport when he was nine or 10 years old, he said.
“My father somehow got us skis from somewhere outside India,” he said. “They were wooden skis, and not very good. But that’s what we learned on.”
But Thakur took to the sport rapidly – so rapidly, in fact, that he was selected for India’s national skiing championships only a year later.
In 2007, when he became competitive enough to ski internationally, his father helped find him a coach in Japan, and later one in Europe. Thakur now spends five months every year training and competing overseas, in Austria, France and Italy, for the most part.
Although his times in international meets have allowed him to qualify for the Sochi Olympics, Thakur is not a medal prospect yet. In his last contest in Iran, on January 15, he finished 12th, his best result over the past year. But he is young and hardworking, the sort of athlete in whom many other countries invest, hoping to nurture and push him into the big leagues.
A skier’s travel and equipment do not come cheap, and only in recent years has Thakur seen an increase in financial and infrastructural support from the Indian government. “Their willingness to pay for some of our expenses has gone up,” he said. “Not too much, mind! Just a little.”
The government has agreed to pay for the costs of participation of its three athletes at Sochi. But the two skiers – Thakur and Nadeem Iqbal – received funds for new equipment only in mid-January, giving them little time to get accustomed to their gear.
Much of Thakur’s professional life is a constant search for sponsorship. In this, he has a role model in India’s third athlete at Sochi. Shiva Keshavan is a luge competitor who will be participating in his fifth Winter Olympics and has raised his own funds to buy equipment.
“We started an online fund-raising campaign, and we managed to rope in some Bollywood actors,” Keshavan told The National from his training camp in Italy. “I’m also supported by an NGO called Olympic Gold Quest.”
Keshavan has cobbled together a team of volunteer engineers, led by his brother-in-law, to develop his own equipment, since buying a luge sled off the market and customising it can prove expensive. “It can cost 600,000 rupees [Dh35,000] or more, so until now I’ve only been using rental equipment.”
An Alpine skier like Thakur, on the other hand, can expect to spend US$14,000 (Dh51,400) a year or more on honing his skills, not counting travel. In the US, a skier’s costs of training, travel, equipment and lodging – running up to as much as $200,000 a year – are borne by the US Ski Association, but Indian skiers have no such support.
“Even now, when I have qualified for the Winter Olympics, I am searching for sponsors,” Thakur said. “That’s what the situation is.
“And now we can’t even fight to win some pride for the Indian flag at the Olympics. It’s very disheartening.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
