15 skiers to vie in Japan Asian Winter Games

MC Thakur

MANALI, FEBRUARY 16

A 22-member Indian skiing team, which includes 15 skiers and seven officials, will participate in the 8th Asian Winter Games at Sapporo, Japan, scheduled to begin from February 18 to 27. The ski team will leave for Japan on February 17.

Skiers will participate in alpine race, cross-country race and snowboarding. The skiers have been chosen from the Army, Himachal, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Punjab. Most skiers have participated in several international events, including Olympics, and are confident about better performance. Nine athletes will compete in alpine races, five in cross-country and one in snowboarding race. The officials include coaches and technical assistants.

Col JS Dhilon (retd), president, Winter Games Federation of India (WGFI), said Avtar Singh from the Army would compete in snowboarding competition and Som Dev Thakur be his coach. He further said Nisha and Sarla Thakur would represent cross-country race in (women category) while Vikas Rana, Gokal Chand and Ajay Bhatt be their technical assistants.

In men’s category, Mohamed Iliyas and Jagdish Singh would participate in cross-country race. The alpine ski (Women) team includes Aanchal Thakur, Varsha Devi, Sandhya, Gayatri Devi and Preeti Dimri in the women category and Himanshu Thakur, Hira Lal, Arif Khan and Vineet Sharma in the men category. Roshal Lal Thakur would be the coach of women skiers and Khem Raj Thakur the coach of men alpine skiers.

Khem Raj Thakur, a national skier and was selected for national team for the same event in Sapporo in 1990, would be the head coach of team India.