at least i made use of the sports quota as you anyway dont earn any money in this sport but after a while you start thinking about earning money too especially because skating is quite an expensive sport the world championship is the only time we are all sent together as a team brahma says initially you do it out of passion for the game apart from staying away from school and college during the competitions skaters need to invest another 60 days of vigorous practise sessions before the competitions we have to either spend from our own pockets or look out for private sponsors who are hard to come by the glory days are gonevizag was once the undisputed champion in skating having won medal after medal and even the overall championship award for almost a decade till 2012 p satyanarayana the coach for artistic skating at shivaji park says there isnt a lot of infrastructure and facilities for artistic skating in other cities since ill soon be pursuing my mbbs i will obviously not be able to compete professionally anymore as it gets difficult to balance a professional degree and a professional sport reasons one of the last few skaters in vizag to have gone international in fact even in the future my son were to take up skating i would discourage him from the sport says bhrama when we were young we had seniors whom we looked up to and who we used to learn from if skating is included as a category in olympics there is a little hope for the game sv raja coach for speed skating says back then skaters took the sport seriously and pursued it even after their graduation skating takes a backseat nowthe coaches lament that the current state of affairs is especially dismal because unlike many other sports the problem is not infrastructure the overall championship comprises of events like speed skating artistic skating and roller hockey of which artistic skating has been vizag players strong point k kalyan coach for the indian skating team talking about the glory days of skating says till 2006 all the medals would come to the indian team and only the left over medals would go to others but like her unfortunately almost all of them have been dropping out of their sporting careers after finishing their higher secondary education but now everyone quits after they finish their intermediate the other times we have to fend for ourselves but she still comes to skate around the park during her summer holidays the issue is that the number of skaters taking up the sport seriously is on the decline bhagirath member of the roller skating federation of india rsfi adds for other sports such as tennis even when there is a ranking of under200 we celebrate it but when it comes to skaters not many know that there have been several winners from india and that too from vizag who got under10 ranking i quit