Winter Sports In Himalayas Can Be A Game Changer For Indian Economy: Arif Khan

OutlookIndia

Mohammed Arif Khan will represent India in the upcoming Winter Olympics 2022 in Beijing from February 4-20. This will be the first time an Indian Alpine skier will represent the tri-colour in two different events at the Winter Olympic Games. Arif Khan is from Jammu and Kashmir and considers himself as a brand ambassador of the Himalayas of India.  Arif Khan, inducted into the Target Olympic Podium Scheme, was recently approved an amount of Rs 17.46 Lakh by the Sports Ministry towards training in Europe and procurement of equipment, ahead of the grand event in China. (Video courtesy: SAI; Images from Arif's Facebook account)  Follow this story and more: https://www.outlookindia.com/  #Sports #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup

Transcript

00:00 So you think that your participation and you have been the only Indian to compete in two events

00:05 and even help popularize this sport in the country, in general, in the masses?

00:10 Yeah, actually, like it has always been my dream, you know, to introduce the Indian Himalayas to the rest of the world.

00:18 You know, when you see people, when you meet people in Europe, when you talk about your mountains,

00:24 they hardly understand that we have this kind of sport within the country.

00:28 So normally in different places around the world, people still don't know about skiing.

00:35 There is skiing in India. People hardly think of snow in India or mountains in India.

00:40 So this is one of the best things that when they see an Indian athlete performing at the world level,

00:46 naturally, the attentions are diverted towards the country, not only towards the athlete.

00:52 This is the one way it can promote.

00:54 The other way it can promote is inspiring the youth within the country, the people they live in the mountains.

01:01 When they hear such kind of news that like a person from the mountains goes and represents 1.4 billion people in the Olympic Games,

01:12 it's itself an inspiration towards them and that helps to promote the sport.

01:17 I have been training for past like 15 years, like traveling to Europe and a few other Asian countries

01:26 and also travel to North America for like trainings and races.

01:30 It's not just been recently, it's been like a long time preparation.

01:35 But when we come to the infrastructure, the infrastructure, what we have can be only used for the basic

01:43 and the intermediate level of like skiing, like as compared to the rest of the world.

01:48 The best we can offer is the mountains and the snow and the free ride skiing, not the competitive skiing.

01:55 The alpine free ride skiing is one of the best we have in the world with one of the highest

02:00 ground dollars in the country in Gulmarg.

02:02 But if we come to the sports, we definitely require at least five, six different places with like slopes,

02:10 like three, four, even five slopes to be built and the international level of slopes with the lifts,

02:16 then we need to have the grooming facilities, you know, that grooms the slope,

02:21 the soft snow turns it into harder surfaces.

02:24 And then coming to the next point is having coaches, you know, the coaches from different places,

02:31 like from the Europe, who are very much experienced,

02:33 they're highly qualified into developing skills of the athletes around the world.

02:39 And we could do this in the next four or five years, you know, we just need a beginning.

02:44 I think this is the right time that people are coming to know that winter sports can be a game-changer

02:50 within India because we have the Himalayas, if we can utilize the Himalayas,

02:55 it can be used for both purposes, sports as well as economic development.

03:00 You know, you can generate economy for the locals as well as for the industry purposes.

03:07 Like in Europe, people generally, they generate $35 billion economy by this sport yearly.

03:14 And it's one of the biggest thing in Europe for five, six months, also in summer.

03:20 But if we talk about in India, yeah, it will take time for sure,

03:25 but not more than four or five years once you start developing more infrastructure.

03:31 [ Silence ]

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