Ahmedabad had no ice. No rink, no coach, no pathway to follow. Every race since has been run somewhere else — and every one of them for India.
PANGONG TSO · LADAKH · NIGHT ICE
I started skating in Ahmedabad, in a country with almost no winter sports infrastructure and no route from a beginner to an international start line. There was no federation pathway to join, no coach to inherit, no one ahead of me to follow.
So the plan became simple and expensive: go to the ice. Every season abroad was self-funded. Every result had to justify the next flight. For years the entire programme was one athlete, one bag, and whatever rink would let me in.
I moved to the Netherlands to train under Wim Nieuwenhuizen — the KNSB lineage, Olympic-standard long track, the deepest speed skating culture on earth. That is where the record starts.
Not testimonials. Not press. Verifiable starts, on the record, in databases anyone can check.
One line runs through all of it: every national record on this list was set outside India — on Dutch, German, Norwegian and Nordic ice. India has never had a long-track oval to set one on. That is not a complaint; it is the exact gap that On Thin Ice Club and Project Rooftop now exist to close.
Eighteen years on ice. Nine on wheels before that. The switch is the part of the story people usually miss.
ON WHEELS · 1999—2007
GUJARAT STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS · INDIA
Third in the 300m, 1500m and 3000m at the 19th Gujarat state roller skating championship. The beginning of nine years on wheels.
GUJARAT · INDIA
State overall champion for the third year running, and national 300m title at the 42nd Roller Skating National Championships. Receives the Sardar Patel Award from the Gujarat government — one of the highest honours the state gives an athlete.
KOLKATA · INDIA
Assistant captain of the Indian team at the 12th Asian Roller and Inline Hockey Championship. The first time the shirt says India.
ON ICE · 2008—PRESENT
KLUBMESTERSKABET · EUROPE
First in the 500m, third in the 3000m. Two national records for India in the first year of a new sport.
EUROPEAN CIRCUIT
National records across every distance he races — 500m, 1000m, 1500m, 3000m, 5000m, 10,000m. Self-funded, season by season.
ASTANA · KAZAKHSTAN
Seventh. First continental championship on ice.
BASELGA DI PINÉ · ITALY
Runner-up at the Ezio Benini e Paride Ravanelli Memorial. Twelve more national records that season.
UTRECHT, NL & ERFURT, DE
First at the SVU Klub Marathon in Utrecht, then first at the Erfurt international races a week later.
SAPPORO · JAPAN
Twenty-nine race days and sixty-three races that season across the European lower divisions. The national record tally reaches 66.
TSO MORIRI · LADAKH
Skates 5km on the frozen surface of a Himalayan lake — an unofficial world record for altitude, and the start of the altitude programme.
INNSBRUCK · AUSTRIA
Three silver and one bronze across multiple distances.
HEERENVEEN, NL & LULEÅ, SE
Sixteenth in the ISU World Cup Division A mass start at Thialf. Weeks later, the Sea Ice Classic — 100km non-stop in 4 hours 53 minutes, the first Indian to finish it.
LADAKH & NETHERLANDS
Founds On Thin Ice Club — India's first elite winter sports academy, twenty places a season — and Himalayan Argali, the gear brand that equips it.
HARBIN · CHINA
Races the 5,000m at 39, in India's largest ever Winter Games delegation. Faster than his 2017 mark, and the oldest skater in the field.
LEH & AHMEDABAD · INDIA
Eighth in the 1,000m on first participation. Returns to the TEDx stage with "Rising on Ice."
India has no long-track oval. It has something no other skating nation has: a Himalayan plateau that freezes hard enough to race on, at an altitude that rebuilds the blood. Tso Moriri is not a substitute for a rink. It is an advantage no rink can give you.
At 4,522 metres the body compensates for reduced oxygen by producing more red blood cells. The adaptation holds for four to six weeks after descent — long enough to carry into a European racing block. That is now the spine of a four-week camp: acclimatisation, technical ice, performance loading, race simulation and a structured descent.
"The first time I stood on Tso Moriri, there was no line, no lane, no clock. Just a lake that had decided to become a track."
Vishwaraj JadejaOne trains the next athletes. One equips them. Both exist because the route I took should not have been that hard.
India's first elite winter sports institution. Twenty places a season, by application. Ladakh altitude camps and Dutch long-track blocks. Train where few dare to stand.
onthinice.club → I want to carry thisGear built for the conditions the camps actually happen in, and apparel for the people who follow them. Carry the mountain with you.
himalayanargali.shop →Speaking & partnerships
wishwaraj@hotmail.comFind him elsewhere
