Surya Thathu knew he was part of the greater road cycling community of Pune, when he first let slip the choicest Marathi expletive reserved for rumblers under his wheels, and bullying trucks on his flanks—often tormenting riders on the city’s roads at the same time.
The Kashmiri Pandit, who calls himself a firm Punekar now, is selected to the Indian team for next week’s Pune Grand Tour – the biggest international road race to come to the country. What ties him into an increasing trend is that the 27-year-old had switched wheels from roller skating to a road racing cycle. Surya was, in fact, one of several skaters across India, whose athletic abilities were tapped into by various Cycling Federation of India officials fanning across the country, to scout out raw talent for road racing.
Harshveer Singh Sikhon, a savvy all-round rider from Ludhiana, also selected in the Indian group of 8 after several trials, was the first of these converts from skating to cycling. He even went to the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games as a skater, but saw little future in that sport which wasn’t on the ‘priority list’ of national funding. Encouraged by cycling coaches and senior teammates, he says he “synced” with the bike straight away, and had his first track cycling medal within months of starting. Once Harshveer found success, the late CFI vice president Pratap Jadhav who passed away a year ago, got busy cajoling Surya, another skater, to make a permanent shift, by linking him up with premium carbon fibre cycle brand GIANT’s India pointman Pravin Patil.
“Harshveer inspired a lot of skaters to switch, and the Federation has always looked for basic talent in other sports, like our track stars Esow and Ronaldo came originally from football,” explains CFI general secretary Maninder Pal Singh. “Cycling starts seriously only in the 12-14 age group, not earlier, and for our road cycling (there’s also a track category), we have been looking for skaters, because it’s specific muscle groups which are common to both sports. Skaters progress in cycling very quickly,” he adds.
Harshveer, who skated for 14 years since 2004, shifted after not-much-prodding by his Punjab senior riders. His father played kabaddi and mother played hockey. “They motivated me to achieve what they couldn’t in sport, but skating had no government support. My muscles were developed and I took a short time to get very good at cycling after my seniors, who were speed skaters having moved to cycling, helped by lending me their expensive bikes. From Day 1, I synced and knew I was good,” he says.
Balanced movements
Surya says skaters come into cycling with a good base of balanced movements around road curvatures, with their developed muscle groups repurposed for a bike. “You have to build up endurance because cycling is only 15-20 minutes, road cycling is days. But it’s the same fast twitch fibres – on leg muscles, quads, glutes, calves. 80 % is the same movement like skating for the core and arms,” he says.
Surya’s father left Kashmir in 1990 and settled in Dalhousie where he was born. His job brought the family south, and besides skating, Surya took an early liking for sprinting on every climb in Pune on his cycle. “Even before I changed sport, I’d go from Pimpri to Balewadi or Viman Nagar on early morning rides like every Pune kid on a bicycle. I love the feeling of riding in a group (peleton) and breaking away. In cycling you ride all alone, while skating has friends which I miss,” he laments, adding the upcoming race helps him work in a group as a team with his comrades.
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A second-hand German designed Merida bike at his first inter-University in 2021 while cycling was still “time pass”, ended in a surprise 4th place, and his antiquated steel Atlas bike helped him break the ice with his father who he reckoned would have a culture shock when he broached talk of pro sport. “Kashmiri Pandit family. All doctors or engineers. Very academics oriented. Sport had no chance. But I’d secretly convinced my mum to lend me money for a better bike. But after the inter-University I gathered courage to tell my father, ‘Dad, ab 40,000 ki bike leni hogi’.” It turned into an emotional moment.
An accident in October 2022 when he was hit from behind by a truck on the bike on these same roads, and his scapula shoulder blade bone broken, was no deterrent. “Because I won inter university bronze on December 31 within two months,” he laughs. Road cycling was addictive, like that.
For Harshveer, skating and cycling operate with the same tactics, and while the Indian team are rank rookies, it will be an experience to go up against the Europeans. “It’s a mix of endurance and explosiveness decided by who’s going at a high pace over a long period of time,” he says. While skating gave a sense of flying on wheels in his teens, cycling is sport’s version of adulting with wheels for wings that are addictive but where the pain in limbs and overworked lungs on an up-climb kill all notions of romanticism, he says. While Pehla Nasha sounded good only in a movie, cycling as a rebound second love to skating, seems to have worked.
