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Vishwaraj Jadeja is aiming for India’s first OIympic medal on ice
India’s top ice skating champ just won India’s first medals at the World Winters Masters Games that were held in Austria in January. He is currently on year-two of his gameplan to make it to the Winter Olympics 2022.
The straight road to success is a myth, Vishwaraj Jadeja would say. He’s used to riding its curves and bends on razor sharp blades, as a long-track ice-skater hoping to make it to the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The 34-year-old is fresh off a series of wins in the quadrennial World Winters Masters Games, held in January in Austria. He raced under the open sky, and won his country three silvers — in the 3km, 5km and 10km events — and one bronze, in the 1km, making him the first Indian to participate and win medals in what are called the “Olympics for the masters” (ie, sportspeople over 30).
“I expected one medal, I ended up with four,” he says. “I just had to keep it together on the last day, when it was raining and snowing.”
Jadeja has participated in over 220 races over 10 years, and holds 65 national records in ice skating. Any he sets is a record for India, since no other Indian is competing at this level.
So, what is a guy like Jadeja — an engineering dropout from Ahmedabad and former national-level roller-skating champion — doing in a sport like this?
“Chasing the Olympic dream, on blades, because roller-skating is not an Olympic event,” he says.
NEW TURF
Jadeja moved to Denmark at 23, to get a computer science degree. His real goal was to relocate to the Netherlands, where “ice skating is as big as cricket is in India”. For money, he worked three jobs. “One was delivering newspapers on a bike on icy mornings,” he says.
That kind of discipline comes from a childhood where sport was taken seriously. Jadeja and his father, a roller-skating coach, would be up and out at 4 am, to train on the empty streets of Ahmedabad. After school, it was back to training.
While he attended meets and discovered the rigours of the sport in Europe, word spread about the “ice skater from India”.
An article in the Schaatsen, a popular magazine in the ice-skating world, announced that he was looking for a coach. “Three responded, and I picked the one known for his tough sessions,” says Jadeja, referring to his coach and taskmaster, Wim Nieuwenhuizen. “In our first conversation Wim said, ‘If you’re crazy enough to come all the way from India to do my sport, I’m crazy enough to coach you’,” Jadeja says.
Nieuwenhuizen, 72, has trained scores of speed-skaters, including ones that went on to win at the Olympics.
“Vishy and I face a real challenge,” Nieuwenhuizen says. “But his dedicated attitude and will to reach his goals are his strengths.”
What do his parents think of his attitude? “They are worried, sometimes, but not surprised,” Jadeja says.
GAME PLAN
Injury kept him from trying out for the 2018 Winter Olympics qualifying tournaments. “I was disappointed, devastated, depressed, you name it,” he says.
That low point, however, took him to higher places. While the 2018 Winter Olympics were underway, he travelled to the Himalayas and skated on the frozen Pangong Tso, at an altitude of 4,350 metres. The following year, he carried his skates further, to an altitude of 4,522 metres, in Ladakh.
“They were great moments, but for me, until I hold up the Indian flag at the Winter Olympics, I am going to feel unaccomplished,” Jadeja says.
So he and Wim are in the midst of their four-year gameplan for 2022. “We train hard and then we race hard,” Jadeja says.
The struggle for funding continues. His equipment is sponsored by winter sports companies and insurance covers the top-notch healthcare he needs. He gets some funding from friends, family and well-wishers, but it is largely the Sports Authority of Gujarat (SAG) that keeps him going.
“Wim says I can pay him back when I make it to the Olympics,” Jadeja says.
What if he doesn’t make it? “I’ve already been there once, so I know it won’t be the end of the world.”
