BENGALURU: Parents rarely encourage their children’s interest in sports. But, here are parents who made sports training a career to nurture their children’s interest in skating. The result: the couple’s children will be representing India in the world speed-skating championship.
Siblings Dhanush and Mouna will be representing India in the upcoming Federation Internationale Roller Sports, FIRS. This world speed-skating championship is being held from September 10 to 18 in Nanjing, China.
They are children of Balaji Babu and Sudha Babu, who run an academy for city’s skaters, though they started the institute to train their own children.
When Dhanush Babu was 3 years old, he wanted to fly like an eagle with its wings spread out. His mother recalls, “I think he saw the eagle somewhere near home and told us that he wanted to do the same,” says Sudha, who was a long-distance runner during her college days. “Another day, when we were passing by Kanteerava Stadium, Dhanush saw the skaters and thought that he could glide like the bird if only he could train in skating.” His parents immediately took him to a skating rink and registered his name. But he attended a few classes and stopped.
Generally, in skating, right leg pushes the body forward but Dhanush’s left leg was stronger. “Therefore, his coach did not find it easy to train him,” says Sudha.
Balaji Babu and Sudha Babu came up with a solution that would amaze anybody. Balaji, a cricketer with Malleshwaram Gymkhana, and Sudha decided to open a skating class. But before starting to train at the rink, Dhanush was trained in front of Vidhana Soudha by his father.
Sudha says that their background in sports was a big help. “It was not difficult to prepare for the training,” she says. “We did some research on internet, read books about skating coaching and started to train Dhanush.”
They went further. “We also travelled across the country, participating in skating championships and gained experience on how to train skaters,” she says. “Meanwhile, we implemented our lessons during his training and started a skaters’ coaching camp in Basaveshwaranagar in 2004. We later shifted it to Mahalakshmi Layout.”
At their academy, they now train 25 national-level and 45 state-level champions.
Dhanush picked up the sport quickly and at the age of 6 he completed an environmental-awareness rally from Bengaluru to Madikeri. Representing Karnataka at national championships, Dhanush secured 10 gold, 9 silver and 4 bronze medals. He was also the fastest skater of the country in 2014 and 2015, and has won the individual championship trophy thrice at national championships.
He is all set to compete in world championships and has already represented India at seven international skating events including The World Inline Speed Skating Championship 2012 (19th position) and Asian Speed Skating Championship (4th position).
Following in the footsteps of her elder brother, Mouna who started skating at the age of 3, has represented India twice and is yet to open her medal account. But in the national circuit, Mouna has already won 8 gold, 4 silver and bronze medals each. This will be Mouna’s first stint at the international level.
Sudha says, “Everytime Balaji or Mouna performs well, our confidence to train other students soars.”