BENGALURU: Jiah Aryan was six when she first saw skiers in Kashmir and was fascinated by the sport. Seven years later in 2022, she was the only participant from Karnataka to represent the National Skiing and Snowboard Championship at Auli, Uttarakhand. The race was held between Feb 7 and Feb 9, amidst heavy snow where Jiah crashed towards the 70 per cent mark of the race slope, going onto finish the race in fourth place at the Giant Slalom event.
Her mother Janvi Aryan explains that the snow was hard, cutting down the visibility. However, Jiah believes that defeats are common and that she is now working on devising better strategies to move ahead in her upcoming races.
Although her father Aryan Indira Chandrashekar pursued skiing as a passion, it was Jiah who picked up an interest in serious and competitive skiing. “I took skiing in 2019 when I did my intermediate skiing course and my mind started getting more serious about it. Once you get hooked onto skiing, it’s almost impossible to leave it,” says the 13-year-old student.
Aryan missed a gold by a whisker, but ended up with a silver during the alpine skiing at the Junior Nationals Skiing and Snowboard competition held at Gulmarg last year. Currently, she trains from 9am to 5pm every day and practices 30 runs in India. However, she practices more than 50 runs in Serbia, where she is being trained under Janko Vukadinovic, an international skiing coach.
In India, she is training under Bilal Ahmed, and her mother believes that she accelerates from 50 km to 77 km per hour. “At shorter turns, I clock over 50-60 km per hour, but at longer turns I clock at least 80km per hour,” says Jiah, who wants to represent India at the Olympics and the world cup.
Her father Chandrashekar, who is currently funding her training says, “Skiing demands a lot of flexibility and acclimatising oneself to different weather conditions. And Jiah has picked up these qualities early on.” At the end of February, she is going to train at Montenegro and then represent India in six international races in her age group. The race will be held in the month of March, in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro.