Bollapragada Sri Sahiti, barely 11, has brought laurels to the City of Destiny.
With as many as 76 medals already in her kitty, Sahiti has made Vizag proud by becoming the youngest artistic skater to bag 19 medals at the national level. The medals she won include 42 gold, 31 silver, and 3 bronze.
She was also selected for the 19th Asian Roller Skating Championship, which was originally scheduled to be held in China in May 2021. However, it has been postponed due to the pandemic situation in that country.
Her innate talent in artistic skating was identified by the coaches at a month-long summer camp organised at Shivaji Park in 2016. They took an assurance from her parents – B. Viswa Prabhakar, a businessman, and Madhuri Sailaja, an assistant professor in Andhra University – that they would continue to send the girl for long-term training.
They also told the parents that at least two years of regular training was required before any prize or medal could be expected for her.
“I had taken Sahiti to the skating ring every day, but never observed her practice sessions as I was busy with my work on the laptop,” recalls Mr. Prabhakar.
“Hardly six months into the training, her coaches told me that she would have to spend an additional 30 minutes at the rink to train for the district-level competitions in 2016. She won three medals, a gold, a silver and a bronze, at the competitions,” he said.
She had participated in the 57 th, 58 th and 59 th national championship held in 2019 in Visakhapatnam, February 2021 in Chandigarh and in Mohali in December 2021, and improved her tally in each event by bagging five, six and seven medals respectively. She had also bagged a gold medal in the 8–10 year category at the National Ice Skating Competition held in Gurgaon in 2019.
Apart from skating, Sahiti is also excellent in academics. A student of Little Angel’s School till Class VI, she later shifted to Narayana Olympiad and is now in Class VII.
“I do workouts in the morning and practise at Shivaji Park from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. I got 95% in Class VI,” says Sahiti, who gives full credit to her coaches P. Satyanarayana (Team India Coach) and K. Chittibabu (AP Coach) for her success.
Sahiti’s elder brother Sri Saketh, who is studying in Class 9, has secured 35 medals, including 9 at the national level in artistic skating.
