her newfound stardom seems to rest comfortably on aanchal thakurs shoulders indias latest sporting sensation walked into toi chandigarh office to warm applause wowing everyone with her charming manner infectious smile and friendly vibes in conversation the firstever indian to win an international medal in skiing came across as a normal vivacious 21yearold but make no mistake aanchal has a razorsharp brain and the hunger to bring more laurels for the country she handled a wide range of questions deftly responding some difficult ones with a smile and answering others with charming forthrightness she is clearly not content with just one medal i will get better she vowed but also urged sponsors both government and corporate to come up and support skiing toi looks forward to covering her journey as she scales many more snowy peaksso aanchal when you won the medal what was the perception of people and fellow skiers from other countriesthey ask me in a country where temperature rise up to 50 degree celsius how and where do you get snow i reply to them that we have the himalayas so we can also excel in skiing but due to lack of infrastructure we have to go abroad for training when i won the medal many people were surprised and wondered how this did happen my fellow skiers were all praise for me because they knew that in india skiing isnt a popular sport that moment was very special for me they were aware of the hindrances that i had to face to achieve this medalwhat was the reaction back home in indiathe moment i landed my phone was inundated with calls from media persons everyone was telling me that we are waiting for you that was very new for medid you feel that you have done something groundbreaking shattered the glass ceilingwhen i won the medal that time i didnt realize that i was the firstever medalist for india in skiing next morning when i saw tweets and news then i realized that i am the first onehow many followers do you have on twitterbefore the medal i had seven followers and now more than six thousand laughs including the prime ministerto attain perfection how many months do you need to trainin manali snow sets in quite late in other foreign countries skiers train for 10 months a year for us we have to go abroad and train which is quite expensive with the funds we have we manage to train for just 3 months in europe beyond that we cant afford the expensessuppose if you cant go abroad for a year how much can you train in manali and surrounding areasin manali temperature is much higher therefore we get very little snow in rohtang pass we do get snow till july but there is no provision for lifts that we can go to such an altitude we practise at the solang valley in one day we manage to complete two to three runs since we