Meet Vishwaraj Jadeja, the speed skater who trains in the Himalayas and dreams about Beijing

The path to the Olympic Winter Games is never easy. However, for some, that road is strewn with obstacles so large that they can seem insurmountable.

Vishwaraj Jadeja, a speed skater from Ahmedabad, India, has had to maneuver past more than his fair share of roadblocks in his quest to become an Olympian, but that hasn’t stopped him from doing everything in his power to achieve a dream that is now closer than ever before.

Born into an athletic family, Jadeja was surrounded by sport for as long as he can remember: “My father was a roller skater and played hockey, my aunt was playing hockey and roller skating, and both of them went to the nationals” the long track speed skating specialist explained in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com.

"And then there was me. I was born and grew up in a household with all the trophies. The family was not really well off, just making ends meet, and to choose sport, even then, was quite unique in an Indian household because it was the 80s and 90s.”

Jadeja’s school friends balked at the idea that sport could be the focus of anyone’s long-term ambitions. However, from an early age, the aspiring athlete concentrated his efforts on being the best sportsperson he could be, beginning with forging a path in the world of roller skating.

In 1999, at age 14, Jadeja went to his first national roller skating championships, before enjoying five years at the top of his sport, winning a gold medal at the national championships and reaching the podium as an inline skater after later transitioning to that sport.

But there was one simple thing stopping him from reaching his ultimate dream. Simple, but in no way insignificant.

"Inline skating is not in the Olympics, and when you're involved in the sport for 10 years or more you're like, 'Man, I want to go to the Olympics.'”

Plotting a route to an Olympic dream

On the surface, the choice Jadeja made was an easy one. Yet the nuances of reality can often make a mockery of seemingly simple decisions.

With little to no financial resources, but armed with a burning desire to become an Olympian, Jadeja decided to head to Europe, where the best speed skating trainers in the world can be found. As he explained with his typical matter-of-fact logic: "We have three or four races in a year in India, whereas over here [in Europe] we race twice a week sometimes."

His sports-obsessed family backed his decision... but with one caveat. "If you pick up sport, you have to go all the way,” they said. “And all the way means to the Olympics."

No pressure, then.

But employing the persuasive charm – and resourcefulness – that is obvious as soon as you speak to him, Jadeja convinced a University in Denmark to accept his application for a Computer Science course ("Luckily they didn't see my school marks, they just took my interview!") and, after taking out a loan, the young man made his way to Europe, beginning in Denmark, then moving to Sweden and eventually the Netherlands.

"Long track ice skating in the Netherlands is like cricket in India,” he explained, outlining the reason behind the final stop on his journey across Europe. “And that's one of the reasons I moved to the Netherlands, because if you want to play cricket you go to India, if you want to play football you go to Brazil, if you want to do long track, you come to the Netherlands."

Graft over gifts

"I was not talented at all. I was just a hard worker, showed up and worked hard." It may be a self-deprecating view to have of yourself, but this one statement gives you an insight into the determination with which Jadeja has pursued his dream.

Arriving in the Netherlands with no money, Jadeja began to make a name for himself on the ice, which led to a journalist writing an article about this young man from India in search of a speed skating coach.

The article brought him to the doors of legendary trainer Wim Nieuwenhuizen who had a simple proposal for him: “If you're crazy enough to come all the way from India to pursue my sport, I'm crazy enough to coach you.” And so began a coach-athlete relationship that remains to this day.

But training was only the first solution Jadeja had to find. With little money in his pockets, more pressing issues began to block his path, like figuring out how to get food to eat, where to live and how to generate an income.

"Anything you can imagine that could have gone wrong has gone wrong twice,” Jadeja says today. “Ten years on friends' couches across Europe to make sure that I saved on rent.

"The one thing I knew for sure was that if I showed up enough at the ice track, I would make it at some point. Showing up was winning half the fight... and I kept on showing up."

PyeongChang heartache and a mountain to climb

A decade after beginning his winter sports adventure, Jadeja has represented India over 200 times and set 65 national records, including becoming the fastest Indian ever over the 3000m, 5000m and 10000m distances.

As the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 approached, he was finally on the cusp of achieving his lifelong dream when disaster struck. Firstly, the funding stopped – an inconvenience for sure, but also something he was used to – but then injury hit, leaving him unable to walk for a month.

Facing a body blow that was hard to recover from, he failed to qualify for the Olympics.

"I was in a very dark space after that, and during the 2018 Winter Olympics, I could not be in the Netherlands," he recalled, looking back on how desperate he felt when faced with the idea of watching the Games in a speed skating-mad country when his own Olympic dreams lay in tatters. "As an athlete, you're prepared for failure, but this was huge."

Then, as fate would have it, the seed of an idea led to an unexpected path opening up that would renew his passion for life and sport. “One of my friends is a musician,” he explained. “And he said, ‘Vish, you are from India. You should go to the Himalayas and find yourself.'"

Invigorated by the thought, and desperate to escape the pain he was feeling at the time, the athlete set in motion a plan to go to the mountainous Himalayan region of India.

Still, Jadeja being Jadeja, just travelling to the Himalayas was not enough. After watching people skate on the frozen lakes of the Netherlands during the winter months, he decided he would do the same... 4,500 metres above sea level.

After recruiting a photographer friend to accompany him on his journey and making his way to Lake Tsomoriri in Leh in India's state of Jammu and Kashmir, he hired some local villagers to create an Olympic distance track for him on the snow-covered lake and began to skate, setting what he describes as “an unofficial world record for the highest 5km distance ice speed skating.”

Finding new purpose on the road to Beijing 2022

India may not be the first nation you think of when it comes to winter sports, however, dig a little deeper and you discover that the potential within the country is huge.

“Ten of the provinces of India are covered by the Himalayas, so winter sports have immense possibilities," Jadeja said, looking back on his expedition to the frozen lakes in the mountains of India.

“There are 16 lakes in this region and I’ve only explored two. These lakes are like 100km long and 20km wide and they’re completely frozen.”

Some of the potential Jadeja talks about is already being recognised, in a location that for many would seem one of the most unlikely in the world.

As the skater-turned-intrepid-explorer explained: “Another thing I found in the Himalayas was a small village at 3,000 metres where there are 500 ice hockey players, and they are being supported by the Hockey Foundation in Canada. Villagers are playing ice hockey with some of the most expensive equipment, all donated by the NHL!

“Eventually, I want to have athletes from across the world coming and doing this [speed skating] in India, where it is still very much new.”

"It would mean the world to me"

Long-term dreams aside, there is one sporting event on the horizon that is at the centre of all Jadeja’s current efforts and attention: the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. Right now he is carefully mapping out the smoothest pathway to reach the Games – and it all revolves around the mass start event.

“In the 1500 metres [mass start], to get to the World Cup I have to do one minute 59… and I’m at 1:59.34 – I did that two weeks ago.

“And then to participate at the Olympics you have to do 1:57.5. The crazy part is I’ve been doing 1:55 during training, so the training performance is there, but the training performance and the racing performance have to come together.”

Now within touching distance of a destination that has been the focus of his dreams for so long, and buoyed by recent performances that have the potential to make those dreams a reality, Jadeja is finally able to talk about what it would mean to him to make it to next year’s Olympic Winter Games.

“It makes me very emotional, it means a lot to me,” he said, his voice breaking slightly at the gravity of his own words. “Boy, it would mean the world to me.”

From Ahmedabad to Denmark, the Netherlands and the Himalayas, Vishwaraj Jadeja has travelled the world in pursuit of his Olympic dream. And if all goes to plan, the next stop on his inspirational journey will be February 2022's Games in Beijing.

The Beijing 2022 speed skating competition begins on 5 February next year and ends with the mass start on 19 February.