Winter Olympics 2022: From Shiva Keshavan to Arif Khan, India’s progression over two decades

Arif Mohammed Khan will participate in the slalom and giant slalom events at Beijing. (Image: AFP)

As a multi-sport event, the 2022 Winter Olympics being held in Beijing, China, have little consequence for India, considering the country has sent only 15 participants to the Olympics over the last 10 editions. But the Games highlight, periodically, the kind of inertia that ails this set of disciplines in the country.

Arif Mohammed Khan in alpine skiing will be the sole Indian competitor at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the country’s 16th participant in 11 editions. Winter sport as a concept does not hold mass appeal for obvious reasons—as a tropical country, only some parts have the kind of weather and infrastructure to support such disciplines and few people have access to it.

But these games are of significance, besides Khan’s participation, for the country that is hosting the Olympics, which started on February 4, 2022. For more than two years, China has been synonymous with the novel Coronavirus that brought the world to a standstill—and continues to haunt people all over the world. Pictures of Olympic volunteers dressed in what look like spacesuits remind everyone that the threat of the pandemic still lurks.

China’s policies have often irked the Western world, whether it’s human rights abuses, mass persecutions of Uyghurs, clampdown on dissent in Hong Kong or the mysterious disappearance of tennis player Peng Shuai last year after she accused a top government official of sexual misconduct. Besides some distrust of the hosts—Britain offered its athletes temporary phones over fears of spying—there have been reports of how the Olympics will impact the country’s already fragile eco-system. Earlier this week, India joined the US, UK and some others in a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics.

It will be, what the BBC calls, the most controlled international sporting event to date, with robots serving drinks, daily PCR tests and a closed loop environment which will restrict about 60,000 athletes, officials, volunteers and others.

None of these should matter beyond a point to 31-year-old Khan, who made it to the Olympics by qualifying on the artificial slopes of Dubai late last year and even has crowd-funded previous attempts at international competitions. The son of a ski-guide in Gulmarg, Kashmir, he started skiing at the age of four and was winning national-level events by 2005. His attempt to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, failed due to lack of financial support, he has said in previous interviews.

Training for world-level events requires about 110,000 euros ($124,740) a season or about 75,000 euros if training just for the Olympics, he told Reuters last month. 

His is a story of challenges that somewhat mirrors Shiva Keshavan’s, who represented India at six Winter Olympics in the luge event starting with Nagano 1998 as a 17-year-old. At a time when Khan was trying to crowd-source his campaign for Pyeongchang, so was Keshavan—in what turned out to be his last Olympics. Constantly struggling with funds, Keshavan once said that the time spent on raising money is time lost for him, which could have been spent in competitions or training. Keshavan’s best result was a 25th place in the 2006 Turin Games.

In the 24 years since he first made it to the Olympics, besides more awareness about the winter sports’ existence, how it is dealt with by administrators remains almost the same, he says. India doesn’t have a recognised winter sports federation. All winter sports athletes, like Keshavan and now Khan, have made it to the biggest stage on the strength of individual efforts and are not necessarily products of the system.

Keshavan says the most important change that needs to take place is to set a specific due process for winter sports federations—for example, Ski and Snowboard India was recognised by the International Ski Federation (FIS) only in 2020.

Administrative obstacles is one of the reasons Keshavan announced his candidature to the IOC (International Olympic Committee) Athletes Commission last October, one of 17 candidates vying for two seats. All athletes competing in Beijing now will be able to vote for the representatives.

“There is a lot of good that can be done from the Commission,” Keshavan says over the phone from Italy. “For one, more representation for India in international bodies. Second, is directly representing an athlete’s voice—not just from India but other non-traditional winter sports countries. Winter sports is much more limited than summer sports geographically. I have six Games behind me and feel like this is good progression to my role as an athlete.”

Keshavan, who retired after the last Games in 2018, still spends a lot of time on the sport. This includes coaching—Argentinian Lucas Populin, for one—and developmental projects, like how the private sector can play a role in winter sports, just like it does with the summer Games. 

Khan is mostly funded by his family business of ski equipment sales—a seasonal interest subject to tourism in a region known for political unrest. He has support from JSW Sports, which covers 40% of his costs for the Olympics, and the J&K government. He is also a part of the Sports Authority of India’s TOPS (Target Olympic Podium Scheme) list that extends support to suitably identified athletes.

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Khan will participate in the slalom and giant slalom at Beijing. His best result in four World Championship appearances since 2013 has been 45th place.

Keshavan told NPR News recently that it’s a catch-22 situation for an athlete when the “government tells you go win a medal and then we’re going to support you, but you really need the support to win a medal”. 

“Only if the government opens the door,” says Keshavan now. “It’s caught in a vicious cycle, so we need leadership in these moments.”

At a turbulent time when sports, geo-politics, Covid and diplomacy collide amid snowy conditions in China, Khan will don his own leadership role. “It’s going to be a big responsibility,” he told Reuters, “being one in a billion and carrying the flag”.