Ice skating

Asian Open Short Track Speed: Two southern states – Telangana and Karnataka – stole the honours when a pair of speed-skating gold medals were decided on Day 2 of the Khelo India Winter Games (KIWG) 2025 here on Friday. Telangana’s 15-year-old Nayana Sri Talluri won the first gold medal of KIWG 2025 and completed a ‘hattrick’ when she sped to the women’s 500m short track gold at the NDS Stadium.

Nayana, who had won the same medal in the under-17 category last year, was an emphatic winner, clocking 1:01.35 seconds, leaving in her wake the skaters from Karnataka and Maharashtra. She has won in KIWG 2023 in Gulmarg. Unlike KIWG 2024, where there were two skating categories – under-17 and 17 years plus – the skating competition this time is an open one. With several top Indian skaters away in Korea and China to train for the Asian Winter Games in February, this year will see some of the best junior skaters in the country.

Nayana is one of them. She had won two gold medals in KIWG 2024 and then went on to win a 3000m women’s relay gold at the 2024 Asian Open Short Track Speed Skating Championship in Jakarta in August. She has been building on her exposure and experience. “(In Jakarta), there were participants from different countries, which is great, but playing in our own country feels entirely different. This year, I’m back on the ice for the first time, and it’s a nostalgic feeling to be back in Ladakh. It’s been a hat-trick of gold medals for me since I won in Gulmarg in 2023. I feel super great about it,” Nayana told SAI Media.