Roller Skating

Overview

Origin

19th century

Category

Emerging

Olympic discipline

No

Paralympic discipline

No

Central pathway

Federation and state pathway

Athlete profiles on SportSupport

3

Governance and status

Each field below is shown only where we hold a source for it; anything else reads “Not currently verified” rather than a guess. Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports recognition is granted year by year, so it is only ever shown with the year it applies to. Last reviewed: September 2026.

Indian governing/organising body

Roller Skating Federation of India

Ministry recognition

Roller Skating Federation of India — Annual recognition renewed by the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports; no 2026 order is published on the Ministry list — as at 2025Source: Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports — List of recognised National Sports Federations

International federation

Not currently verified

Khelo India inclusion

Not currently verified

TOPS eligibility

Not currently verified

Olympic status

Not on the Olympic programme

Paralympic status

Not a Paralympic discipline

Scholarships & Funding

Central, state and private scholarships available for roller skating athletes in India.

• Khelo India Talent Identification & Development (KITID)

  Stipend, boarding, coaching and kit at accredited centres for talent identified through the Khelo India selection process (Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports). Applies only to disciplines on the official Khelo India Games list, and only to athletes it selects.

• National Sports Development Fund (NSDF)

  Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports fund used to sponsor elite athletes' training, foreign coaches and equipment. Allocations are made case by case; we hold no record of NSDF support specific to roller skating.

• Pension for Meritorious Sportspersons

  Lifetime monthly pension for retired internationals who meet the scheme's medal criteria at Asian, Commonwealth or World Championship level — Government of India. Whether a given roller skating event counts depends on the scheme's notified list.

• State sports quota and government employment

  Many states reserve government and public-sector posts for national-level medallists. Which roller skating events and which certifying bodies a state accepts varies by state, so check your state's current notification.

• Dhanush BabuKarnataka

  Dhanush Babu is an Indian speed skater. Most recently, Babu represented India in the 2019 World Roller Games held in Spain from 4 to 14 July 2019. He was the first Indian to secure an international roller skating medal for India in 2016 at the Asian Speed Skating Championship and to finish fifth in the 500+D event on the track in 2019.

• Jayant RajoraDelhi

  Jayant Rajora is an Indian Inline Speed Skater who represented India in World Roller Games Championship 2017, held at Nanjing, China.

• Rayudu Arun KumarAndhra Pradesh

  Rayudu Arun Kumar (born 23 December 1999) is an Indian artistic roller skater from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. 5 in the under-19 category. He has been a national champion for the last 13 years.

Rules

Roller speed skating under World Skate is raced on wheels — on banked or flat 200m tracks and on road circuits — in both time-trial and mass-start formats. Track events include the 200m and 300m time trial, one-lap sprint, 500m sprint, 1000m sprint, 10,000m and 15,000m elimination and points races; road events run over distances up to the 42km marathon. Placing in mass-start races is decided by finishing order, with points and elimination races scoring intermediate sprints or removing the last skater at set laps. Blocking, cutting the line, impeding and lane infringement bring relegation or disqualification, and false starts are penalised. Artistic skating is judged on technical elements and presentation, while roller hockey and inline hockey are played as five-a-side and six-a-side goal games with their own rulebooks.

Authoritative rulebook: Roller Skating Federation of India. Age-group and school-level variations are published by SGFI and the state associations each season.

Positions

Typical roles across emerging sports. These are category-level descriptions, not a sourced roller skating squad list.

• Attacker / offensive role
  The point-scoring position in the sport's playing format.
• Defender
  Prevents the opposition from scoring and controls the defensive zone.
• All-rounder / substitute
  Rotates through roles or comes in as a tactical substitute.

Equipment

Standard kit and infrastructure required to train and compete in roller skating at a federation-recognised event.

• Inline speed skates: carbon boot heat-moulded to the foot, 4x110mm or 3x125mm frame, high-durometer wheels and bearings matched to track or road surface
• Quad skates for artistic and roller hockey disciplines
• Helmet mandatory; skinsuit for speed events, plus knee, elbow and wrist protection for training and for hockey
• Spare wheel sets and bearing tools — wheel choice by surface and temperature is a core part of race preparation
• Access to a banked 200m track (such as the VMRDA track at Visakhapatnam) for competition-standard training

Governing/organising body

Major Indian Events

Domestic competitions we hold a source for in roller skating.

• National Roller Skating Championship

  Run by the Roller Skating Federation of India (RSFI, also known as India Skate), founded in 1955 by S.P. Mumick, affiliated to World Skate since 1971, a founder member of World Skate Asia in 1978, and recognised by the Government of India in September 1990 and subsequently by the Indian Olympic Association. Championships run across Cadet, Sub-Junior, Junior, Senior and Masters categories for men and women. The 62nd edition was held at Mysuru in 2024, the 63rd at Visakhapatnam on the VMRDA banked 200m track, and the 64th is scheduled for Bengaluru in December 2026. RSFI also runs Ranking Speed Skating National Championships and covers roughly a dozen disciplines including artistic skating, inline freestyle, roller hockey, inline hockey, inline downhill, roller derby, skate cross and skateboarding.

• Roller hockey

  The Indian Roller Hockey National Championship dates to 1963 and is contested by around 12 state teams in both men's and women's divisions. Haryana and Chandigarh have dominated the men's title, and Haryana the women's. The sport is stronger in north India, partly on the back of field hockey's popularity there.

• School and university pathways

  Roller skating features in the All India University Games and the SGFI, CBSE, Kendriya Vidyalaya and ICSE national school competitions, giving it an unusually wide grassroots base for a non-Olympic sport.

International Events

Continental and world-level competitions we hold a source for in roller skating.

• World Speed Skating Championships 2025 — India's breakthrough

  At Beidaihe, China in September 2025, 22-year-old Anandkumar Velkumar became the first Indian world champion in speed skating, winning the senior men's 1000m sprint in 1:24.924. He added gold in the 42km marathon and a bronze in the 500m sprint in 43.072 — the latter itself India's first senior Worlds medal in the discipline. Junior skaters Krish Sharma (gold, 1000m sprint) and Anish Raj (bronze, one-lap sprint) took India's tally to three golds and two bronzes. RSFI president Tulsi Ram Agarwal described the result as breaching a field long dominated by Western and East Asian nations.

• World Games and World Roller Games

  Velkumar won bronze in the men's 1000m sprint at the 2025 World Games in Chengdu — India's first medal in roller sports at that event. Dhanush Babu of Bengaluru, long regarded as India's fastest roller speed skater, took bronze in the men's 20km points race at the 2019 World Roller Games in Barcelona and has won over 14 national golds.

• Asian competition

  India won two bronze medals when roller sports were a medal event at the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, and the sport also featured at the 2012 Asian Beach Games and the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games. At the 2025 Asian Roller Skating Championships, Velkumar won the 500m plus points race with Aryan Pal taking silver. RSFI states the Indian team is second overall in Asia.

Leagues

No dedicated professional league is currently catalogued for roller skating. The national championship under Roller Skating Federation of India remains the top domestic competition.

International Players

Globally recognised roller skating athletes to know outside India.

The international federation for roller skating maintains the current world ranking — check the federation site for the up-to-date top names.

Career Options

Ways to build a career in roller skating — on the field, on the sidelines and behind the scenes.

• This is inline and quad roller skating under World Skate and RSFI, and is entirely separate from ice speed skating in India, which falls under the Ice Skating Association of India and produces different national records and different athletes — the two are frequently confused because both use the term speed skating
• Roller sports are not on the Olympic programme, so despite a national squad ranked inside the world top ten across age categories, Indian skaters have no Olympic pathway and the sport receives little of the funding and attention that follows Olympic status
• The grassroots base is broad and largely school-driven — skaters register with clubs, which affiliate to district associations, then state associations, then RSFI — and coaching academies in Nagpur, Bengaluru, Gujarat and Maharashtra feed the national championships
• Coaching and technical officiating are established routes: figures like HR Ravish, who skated competitively from 1984 to 2000 before moving into administration and coaching with the Karnataka association and RSFI's speed technical committee, have shaped the national programme
• Skateboarding also sits under RSFI, which gives the federation a live Olympic discipline even though roller skating itself has none
• Note on sources: RSFI's own listings give its headquarters variously as New Delhi and Visakhapatnam

No roller skating academies are catalogued in the directory yet. Browse the full academy list or list your academy to appear here.

Central and state schemes that fund training, stipends and awards for roller skating athletes and academies.

• Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions
  Recruitment of Meritorious Sportspersons to Group C Posts in the Central Government (DoPT Sports Quota)

  Under instructions of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), central government ministries and departments can directly recruit meritorious sportspersons to Group C posts (including erstwhile Group D) that are filled by direct recruitment, in relaxation of the normal recruitment procedure. The list of qualifying sports has 65 disciplines (63 listed in 2020, with Tennis Ball Cricket added in January 2021 and Yogasana in June 2022). Kudo, Karate, Taekwondo, Golf, Judo, Boxing, Wrestling, Badminton, Cricket and Tennis are among them. Railways and a few scientific and atomic-energy services follow separate rules.

FAQs

Common questions about roller skating in India.

Roller Skating in every state & UT

Dedicated pages for Roller Skating in each Indian state and Union Territory — academies, schemes, athletes and how to start.

• Roller Skating in Andhra Pradesh
• Roller Skating in Arunachal Pradesh
• Roller Skating in Assam
• Roller Skating in Bihar
• Roller Skating in Chhattisgarh
• Roller Skating in Goa
• Roller Skating in Gujarat
• Roller Skating in Haryana
• Roller Skating in Himachal Pradesh
• Roller Skating in Jharkhand
• Roller Skating in Karnataka
• Roller Skating in Kerala
• Roller Skating in Madhya Pradesh
• Roller Skating in Maharashtra
• Roller Skating in Manipur
• Roller Skating in Meghalaya
• Roller Skating in Mizoram
• Roller Skating in Nagaland
• Roller Skating in Odisha
• Roller Skating in Punjab
• Roller Skating in Rajasthan
• Roller Skating in Sikkim
• Roller Skating in Tamil Nadu
• Roller Skating in Telangana
• Roller Skating in Tripura
• Roller Skating in Uttar Pradesh
• Roller Skating in Uttarakhand
• Roller Skating in West Bengal
• Roller Skating in Andaman & Nicobar Islands
• Roller Skating in Chandigarh
• Roller Skating in Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu
• Roller Skating in Delhi
• Roller Skating in Jammu & Kashmir
• Roller Skating in Ladakh
• Roller Skating in Lakshadweep
• Roller Skating in Puducherry