National Skating Championships Day 2: Ugly crash mars otherwise entertaining day

Hrithik Karadi

The day’s events began with the road event for the inliners and the time trial event for the quad, both happening simultaneously. The youngest inline age group was not too exciting but things really began heating up in the 10-12 boys race. Hrithik Karadi distanced himself from almost the entire field with more than a 100m gap to take his second gold medal of the championship. He was followed closely by Harris of Tamil Nadu who took home the silver.

The 12-14 girls event was won by Amreen Khan with a sizeable lead. The 12-14 boys event came down to the wire with Ashish of Chennai capturing gold for the second time in the championship. The 14-16 girls event maintained a relatively slow pace coming down to the final sprint with Musckaan Chauhan and Simran of Haryana capturing gold and silver respectively.

Zaheer Abdul Khan beat Prithviraj Deshmukh by a whisker to take his second gold and Prithviraj won his second silver. Meanwhile, the above 16 women’s race ended predictably with Aarathy Kasturiraj winning the gold, Shivani Shetty of Maharashtra winning silver and Shraddha Reddy taking the bronze.

The above 16 men’s race had a lot more elements of drama in it. There was a breakaway that was neutralized by the last lap and then there was a crash at the second last turn. In the end, Akash Aradhya of Karnataka took the gold and Parth from Gujarat won the silver. Akash Raju of Karnataka almost had the bronze medal in the bag until he fell less than a metre from the finish line. A few moments after the race ended, however, Akash Raju was hit by a Haryana skater who blamed his crash on Akash and then had to be restrained by the officials and the crowd.

Later in the evening, it was announced that Akash Raju had been disqualified and would not be allowed to participate in his last event, while the skater who hit Akash got off with a simple warning. While this decision against Akash Raju may seem excessively harsh, we must assume that the officials had just cause to do what they did. That said, when a skater who physically abuses another skater is only given a warning for his actions, it is certainly disappointing and possibly sends the wrong message to other skaters.

That was the end of the morning’s events, and what would have otherwise been a successful morning was marred by that one untoward incident. The evening’s races were only rink 2A heats for quads and Rink 5 or 1000m heats for the inline skaters, with the finals for these events scheduled for the next day.