In any other house, there would be celebrations over the younger daughter’s achievements. Prisha Bahety has come back from the first National Inter-District Skating Championship in Mohali with two silvers and a bronze, the only one in her age group to get medals and one of two medalists in the contingent.
But if that is not the case, it is because the family’s elder daughter Ridhi has got a call-up to the Indian skating team, “a far bigger feat”, as Prisha herself points out. In fact, she has followed in her sister’s track, having started skating at the age of four, three years after Ridhi did.
And also because Prisha cannot get over how she lost not one, but two golds. “I had won three golds at the Open Nationals. So this was not a result I was expecting,” she reflects.
Prisha, 16, had contested in three races in the junior category. “Competition was tough in each. But in the 500m rink, I was cruising in front till the last lap when a girl pushed me from inside, I lost momentum and she overtook me as did another girl behind us. Since it happened right at the end, there was no time for me to make up. I complained to the officials later but they ruled that the push was not intentional.”
For the one lap round race, the finish was so close that a scanner had to be brought in to decide who won, she said.
But the Ultadanga girl has made peace with the results. “This is a sport. I can’t win all the time,” she reasons.
Prisha has just got promoted to Class XII at Mahadevi Birla World Academy, which has a skating team that competes in the CBSE Games.
But now it is neither studies nor skating that is her priority. “I have the shooting state championship coming up in June,” smiles the student of Joydeep Karmakar Shooting Academy.
Studies, skating, shooting... which should she focus on? “Right now, she is balancing all three. She is doing well in studies also,” her mother Rekha smiles.