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The morning was supposed to begin at 6:30 am, but because of the lack of light, the marathon events only began at 7:30 am. The 21km events began with the junior girls. Beginning the event took a lot of time, because after the athletes had assembled, there seemed to be some confusion among the officials. It took nearly half an hour to sort everything out and for the race to begin. The circuit was 1.7 km long and had both left and right turnings. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that one stretch of road was completely wet.
This wasn’t going to stop the skaters though. The race was pretty fast despite expectations of slow pace. There would be 17 laps of which 11 laps would be on the 1.7km circuit following which skaters would have to execute a perilous turn to enter the second circuit which was also the venue for the road races. The girls began with 24 athletes skating. 15 finished with Musckan Chauhan defending her marathon gold, Akhila Roy Chowdhury coming second and Amreen Khan impressively taking the bronze.
There was another gap of half an hour before the junior men began their race. This race was even faster and ended very quickly. Tejeshwar of Tamil Nadu took the gold with a comfortable lead over Prathik Prasad in second place. Zaheer Abdul Khan of Andhra Pradesh took home the bronze. The senior women’s race was as expected. Ridiculously slow. The race was over an hour but the last lap was a blistering sprint won by Aarathy Kasturiraj followed closely by Varsha Puranik. The senior men’s race began excitingly. Akash Raju began the first break away early in the race, but unfortunately was not able to sustain the pace he was setting and soon dropped back. Next, Varshith Venugopal and Akash Aradhya led another group to a successful breakaway.
Varshith then broke away from this group to build up an enormous lead that he maintained until the end of the race. He won the gold which is especially impressive since this is his first year as a senior. About half an hour after the race ended, the prize distribution and closing ceremony began. A few speeches were made and the officials were honoured. After the medals were given away, the winners were asked to stand in the middle of the rink so one last picture could be taken. That was it. The nationals were over.
The event that everyone had been counting down to all year was over. Soon a new cycle would begin but for now there was much celebration and relief among the skaters. The 51st Nationals were marked with multiple records being set in different events and many young stars of tomorrow being discovered. It has been a wonderful week and a successful National championships.
