BHUBANESWAR : She has earned the moniker of ‘Snow Girl of Odisha’, and not for no reason.
In the Senior National Ski & Snowboard Championship at the second Khelo India Winter Games-2021 held in Gulmarg recently, Rourkela girl Ranjita Behera missed a medal but impressed many with her skiing skills.
The first trained sportsperson from Odisha to take to the snow sport, she missed out from the top-3 positions by a few seconds but her performance caught the eye of many coaches and senior players including winner of the competition Anchal Thakur. This was Ranjita’s first attempt at snow sports.
“I gave the competition my best but probably securing a medal needs even more intense training”, says the 26-year-old player who is a trained mountaineer from Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering & Winter Sports, Jammu and Kashmir.
Impressed with her performance at the Snowboard Championship, Deputy Commandant and head coach of Indo Tibetian Border Police (ITBP) Nanak Chand Thakur assured Ranjita to provide her training from ITBP if she decides to continue playing. “It is unbelievable that a girl from Odisha can ski so well considering that she grew up in a State that has no connection with snowfall”, he remarked.
Ranjita, who wanted to get into the army, always nurtured an interest in adventure sports because of her background in NCC. “After my graduation from Sambalpur University, I decided to learn mountaineering from Jawahar institute and was subsequently chosen by the State government to take part in the first Biju Patnaik Himalayan expedition to Mt Rudugira at Uttrakhand in 2016”, recalls Ranjita who began training in snow skiing at the institute in 2018 and then from Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports (ABVMAS) at Manali.
She was also the only girl in the country to take the instructor course in skiing from ABVMAS. “I was so occupied with mountaineering and skiing that I forgot about my army ambitions. Also, since Odias have never explored skiing as a sport or even as a hobby, I wanted to set an example”, she says. But skiing, she adds, is an expensive affair. “Coming from a middle class background, I cannot think of making a career out of it or participating in tournaments unless I get sponsorship.
The expense of training, cost of equipment can come to Rs 10,000 per day. The skiers I competed with at Khelo India games were from the ITBP, Army and some were even trained Olympians. It is not easy to compete with them unless you are trained from the best in the field”, says Ranjita, who plans to undergo skiing training from Scandinavian countries. The Odisha government had helped her in procuring the equipment for the Khelo India Winter Games.