India’s Winter Olympic hope denied Iranian Visa

Himanshu Thakur is an alpine skier from India who represented India at the 2014 Winter Olympics in the giant slalom race securing a rank of 72. He has flown to Tehran in Iran to take part in the Winter Olympic qualification round in giant slalom event where he has been denied an Iranian Visa which would prevent him from taking part in the event. 

He took to Twitter to seek help from the Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore(Indian Sports Minister) , Sushma Swaraj(Minister of External affairs) and Narendra Modi (Prime Minister of India) and tweeted, “I request @SushmaSwaraj Swaraj, external affairs minister, @Ra_THORe 

Rathore, sports minister and @narendramodi hon’ble prime minister to kindly help me. I want to race in Iran to qualify for winter Olympics but host country is denying the visa on arrival. Please read my next tweet."

He had missed a couple of chances previously to qualify for the Winter Olympic Games scheduled from 9 February to 25 February in Pyeongchang County, South Korea either due to an equipment malfunction.

“I could have easily qualified for the Olympics last year, but it seems I am jinxed. During the 2017 Asian Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan, I could not complete the race due to an equipment malfunction.” TOI quoted the 23-year-old.

He further added, “I missed two races in Bulgaria since my flight from Turkey to Bulgaria got delayed for more than five hours. Later, I missed a couple of race in Iceland due to bad weather. Now, I am going to Iran on a hope.”