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Home , Shiva Keshavan, Sled

THE DARK HORSE

130 — JULY 2012 heads to the is the Olympic hopeful you’ve Michael Snyder Shiva Keshavan never heard of. NISHANT SHUKLA hills of Manali to discover just why you might want to keep an eye on this guy PHOTOGRAPHED BY

is usually practised, Keshavan at the roadside laughing at him in his routinely hits speeds from 130-150kph. mud-splattered jumpsuit. He doesn’t traf c up here.” Shiva Keshavan gestures He’s slower on the street, but I can’t seem to notice. up the road, a tight asphalt curve wind- stop thinking about those trucks. Keshavan may hold bronze, silver ing up the Kullu Valley from Manali to After a few test runs, Keshavan tells and gold medals from the Asia Cup; the Rohtang Pass. me and his friend Dado to drive down he may have set the continental speed “Almost?” I ask. the hill and meet him at the bottom. record in 2011 at 134.3kph; he may be He nishes pulling on his red, white About halfway down, where the road the youngest person ever to qualify for and black jumpsuit. “A few trucks some- enters a series of villages, we catch up. the Winter Olympics in his sport – but times,” he shrugs, then slips on his white We’re directly behind him, that sport is still luge. He’s commit- helmet and heads uphill. rumbling over the rough pavement in ted half his 30 years to an event even The trucks worry me. Keshavan is In- his old Gypsy, honking emphatically his parents hadn’t heard of when he dia’s only internationally ranked winter to warn the oncoming traf c. Shiva is started. Incredulity and incomprehen- athlete, the country’s best shot at its rst a red bolt over the asphalt, dodging sion don’t faze him. Winter Olympic medal, and he’s about to potholes, ditches and cars. “He was very good at gymnastics, he hurtle down this public road on a street At the bottom, Keshavan pulls up was a runner, a hockey player – he did luge – a low-clearance steal sled mounted short behind a stopped bus, stands, a lot of things in school,” Sudhakaran on – maneuvering the removes his helmet and  ashes us a Kallikandy, Shiva’s father, tells me some sharp curves with minute shifts in body grin. “That was good fun.” Villagers in days later. “But going for this [sport]… weight. On the closed tracks where woollen caps and shabby vests stand he could be the only one in .”

JULY 2012 — 131 THE DARK HORSE

engineers and technicians – it’s a whole on his own, so I started handling every- team that they travel with, which I don’t thing peripheral to the sport.” Keshavan took to the slopes as a child, have access to.” During the roughly six In 2010, Namita and Shiva were mar- strapping on a pair of skis fashioned by months of the year that he spends on the ried, and in 2011 Keshavan set his speed his father out of wood and saw-metal, training and competition circuit, Kesha- record at the Asia Cup on a sled bor- and throwing himself headlong down the van travels with his own gear, pools re- rowed from the defending champion. hill outside his house. It was an ordinary sources to hire a shared coach with other “I remember him going back to Mana- Manali childhood. under-funded competitors and is forced li [after ], and it was better than His parents both came to Himachal to borrow sleds for competition. the Independence Day Parade in Delhi,” Pradesh in the late Seventies – About six years ago, he began work- Devan recalls. After that gold medal in Sudhakaran from the hills of northern ing with Namita Agarwal, an MBA with Japan, telecom company MTS committed ; Rosalba from Tuscany – and an MA in organizational psychology to doubling its sponsorship to $40,000, settled in the then-remote village of from the London School of Economics, just enough to fund travel expenses and Vashisht, where they raised their sons who left her position at a major interna- some new equipment. If he wins a medal in English, Hindi and Italian. Rosalba, tional consultancy rm to manage his at the 2014 in , once captain of an Italian rst-division career. For over 10 years, she told me, Russia – and he very well might – he will volleyball team, and Sudhakaran, an avid Keshavan “had been handling everything become India’s rst Winter medallist. sports enthusiast in his own right, en- Despite all this, sports administrators couraged their boys to pursue whatever in Delhi have yet to catch up. “Delhi is so made them happy. far-removed from Manali or Uttarakhand “We didn’t want them to become or Kashmir, that they don’t even realize it doctors or scientists,” Sudhakaran says. here,” Agarwal laughs, though she “We’re not thinking of making money or isn’t joking. When Keshavan began ap- anything. But quality of life? Of course!” plying to be of cially recognized by the His statement rings true. After all, he State for his achievement at Nagano, they and Rosalba had settled here seeking insisted he produce proof that luge was a just that, running simple restaurants in real Olympic sport. a town catering to a large population “The Winter Sports Federation of visitors, brewing coffee from beans (WSFI) is really just a bunch of guys in grown exclusively for their own use on a Delhi who don’t even know how to ski small family plantation in Kerala. themselves,” Keshavan shakes his head. Encouraged by his parents, Keshavan That sort of comment has gotten him in did pursue skiing seriously for a while, trouble before, attracting a defamation but, frustrated by nepotism and “cor- suit after the 2010 Olympics when he ac- ruption” in the sport, he quit at 14. A cused RK Gupta, former secretary of the few months later, an initiative from the WSFI, of incompetence. International Luge Federation sent an But the ght is worth something, at ex-world champion to India in search least as Keshavan sees it. “When I’m of fresh talent. Of the 30-odd kids who competing, I’m competing for myself,” he participated in that rst scouting camp – admits. “But apart from that, I want to among them Keshavan’s younger brother, inculcate a winter sports culture here in Devan, who now plays football in Flor- the valley.” ence – just two were sent to Europe to join what Shiva calls “a team of athletes from unlikely countries”, like Jamaica, Bermuda and the Virgin Islands. When he’s not on the road, Shiva Most of those kids went home eventu- spends most of the summer season at ally, but Keshavan improved so quickly that, at just 16, he quali ed for his rst Olympics, carrying India’s  ag as the country’s sole representative at the 1998 games in Nagano, Japan. After, he returned home, nished school, then moved back to Europe to pursue his bachelors and masters de- grees in political science at the Univer- sity of Florence, in close proximity to the heart of the luge circuit in Austria and Switzerland where he taught himself German and French. Quality of life he had – but funding was a problem. The larger teams, Kes- havan says, “have a number of coaches; they have physiotherapists, dieticians,

132 — JULY 2012 LONE STAR Keshavan is India’s sole hope at the Winter Olympics; (opposite) Shiva seems out of place at Rinku’s gym home in Vashisht, helping Rosalba ready descend into a musty basement. Posters month.” Rinku winces, smiles. Tall, hand- her restaurant, working with his wife of body builders and WWF wrestlers some and pristine in his grey-and-white on funding proposals – and, of course, are plastered over peeling walls, de- Reebok gym gear, Keshavan cuts an odd training. While abroad, he’s gotten crepit pipes drop through the concrete gure against the shattered bricks and used to working alongside world-class ceilings and exposed ends of rebar turn sagging machinery. athletes in world-class gyms. But in doorways into hazards. The weight One day, Keshavan tells me, he hopes Manali, he says, “I pay `500 per month machines are broken-down skeletons. to see a proper winter sports complex for the gym. You can imagine what kind It’s hard to imagine that the rusty oil open up in the valley. Maybe even a luge of a gym it is.” can at the edge of the stairs has ever track. Standing here, in Rinku’s gym, it As it turns out, I can’t. The Aryan been used. all seems a bit far-fetched. Helth Club (on the sign inside, it’s spelt It’s a Sunday afternoon when we Not to Shiva, though. “It’s not always “Heltah”; curiously, it appears nowhere arrive, and the door is locked. We meet about money,” he says, echoing his father. as “Health”) sits at the end of a narrow the owner, a guy called Rinku, to get the “You create that synergy of collaboration lane near the centre of Manali. To reach key, and Keshavan introduces us: “He just through organization. And for that, it, we duck under drooping electrical just won Mr Himachal for the second you need somebody at the head of affairs wires, trudge over a pile of rubble, climb time,” he says, clapping him on the who’s thinking about the sport.” three rungs of a imsy metal ladder and back. “He’s been sick with typhoid for a We might just be looking at him.

JULY 2012 — 133