The Hindu : Sport : Shiva keen to put his best foot forward

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 01, 2006

Sport

Sport - Sports : General

Shiva keen to put his best foot forward

P. K. Ajith Kumar

KOZHIKODE: In Salt Lake City and Nagano, he was one in a billion. Literally. Shiva Keshavan was India's sole representative in the last two Winter Olympic Games.

In Turin, where the 20th Winter Olympics opens on February 10, he will not have to feel lonely. Two other Indians — Hira Lal and Gurung Bahadur — will also be there. "It will be great finally to be part of a team at Turin," Shiva told The Hindu from Turin, where he is training for the big event. "I hope there will be more athletes from India in the future."

The 24-year-old Shiva, son of a Keralite father and Italian mother, says he is confident of doing well in what is going to be his third straight Winter Olympics. "The Olympic Games are, to my mind, the highest level of competition that an athlete can aspire to participate in. I hope to put in my best effort, and more importantly, to compete with loyalty and sportsmanship. I will slide with the single aim to win."

In good form

Shiva, a student at the University of Florence, goes into the Olympics in good form, having won two medals at the Asia Cup in Japan last month. He made his Olympic debut in1998 at Nagano in style. At 16, he will become the youngest athlete ever to qualify for luge — a sport in which you race in a slide lying supine at the Olympics.

Shiva took up luge by pure chance. Based at Vashisht in the Himalayas, he was interested in winter sports all along. International Luge Federation spotted him at a camp held at Panchkula for the beginners. He hasn't sled back since then.

He — the one-man team from the world's second largest populated country who raced on a sled borrowed from the Korean team — hit the headlines in Nagano. And he found himself popular among media in Salt Lake City as well.

In his own country though, he remains an unknown champion whose expensive Olympic campaigns are still funded by his family, friends and neighbours.

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