Kolkata: For Arif Khan, India’s only representative at the Beijing Winter Olympics which got underway on Friday, it must be a lonely affair. Quite a stark contrast to the jumbo contingent the country sends for every Summer Olympics - but it had been quite a norm as winter sports is far from catching up in India and is an expensive proposition.
Ask Shiva Keshavan, a six-time Olympian in luge who used to be the lone athlete flying the tricolour on most occasions. Now retired, the 40-year-old Kesavan wants to be in the running to be in the Athletes’ Council during the Beijing Games.
It was in end-November last year that the 31-year-old skiier earned a berth in slalom event at a meet in Dubai - which made him the first Indian to qualify for two different Winter Games events directly. He had earlier secured his giant slalom cut during the Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) meet held at Kolasin, Montenegro.
Slalom, incidentally, is an event that involves skiing between sets of poles spaced at a distance from each other with the distance being greater in giant slalom than in slalom. The men’s giant slalom event will be held on February 13 while slalom will be held on February 16 at Xiaohaituo Alpine Skiing Field in Beijing.
“To be the one athlete who makes it through from a country of over a billion is special. Professional athletes spend four to five years just training and perfecting their sport and nothing else. I’ve done that and now I am just waiting for it to begin,” Arif said in an interview last year.
What made him take to the demanding sport of skiing in the first place? Well, he hails from Gulmarg in Jammu & Kashmir, a tourist haven and once a favourite destination for Bollywood filmmakers till they gravitated to Europe where his family owned a tourism-cum-ski equipment shop.
An expensive sport to pursue, Khan narrowly missed out on his bid for the 2018 Pyongyang Games before he was named in the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) of the Union sports ministry and received a grant for his Olympic preparation in Europe. He is also being supported by JSW Sports, whose excellence programme covers the likes of Olympic gold medallist javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra.
A day after being nominated for the Laureus Breakthrough Award of the year, Chopra himself sent out an appeal to Indians to extend their support to Arif who embarks on a rather demanding assignment. .
“I want to thank all my countrymen who supported Indian athletes at the Tokyo Olympics. Beijing 2022 is starting and I want to request everyone to support us in Beijing as much as you did in Tokyo,” Chopra told Olympics.com.
“Our very own Arif Khan has qualified for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. I want to congratulate him and just tell him to give it your all for your country at Beijing,” he added.
The 24-year-old Chopra also extended his best to every athlete competing at the Winter Games in China. “I hope you have an incredible experience at the Games. Stay focused, enjoy yourselves and have fun representing your countries at the Games,” he added.
