Cape Town - For figure skater Sinali Sango, personal milestones over the next few years will look quite different from than most 12-year-olds’.
The current SA Novice Champion is on track to compete in the 2020 Junior Winter Olympics in Switzerland. While his peers are getting their driver’s licences in 2022, he hopes to be skating in the Winter Olympics.
“In order to get there, I must train much harder and fight on the ice. Obviously when you do a difficult sport there’s a certain attitude you need that doesn’t allow you to give up,” Sinali said.
He has just returned from Europe with two other South African skaters, Donatella Glatter and Jaydean Brits. Their first stop was the World Development Trophy in Poland, in which Sinali placed seventh.
The second was the eighth Rooster Cup in Paris, from which he brought home bronze. Sinali is the first South African to place that high in the Rooster Cup.He said he “shouted really loud” when he won bronze, as he usually does to celebrate.
“Most of my classmates don’t really understand what I do because they go to the rink to skate around for fun, but those that have taken the sport further know what a big achievement this is.
”Sinali was raised in Cape Town, but first fell in love with skating while visiting his grandparents one winter seven years ago in the Ukraine.
“He couldn’t take his eyes off the skaters on the television,” said his mother, Tatiana Sango. “When we came back to South Africa he started skating, and I soon realised this was the one sport he would be committed to.”
Sango is the driving force behind Sinali’s success. She keeps him on schedule through his twice-daily practices, drama and dance classes, cross-training and competitions, as well as his Grade 7 school work.
“My skating schedule doesn’t change no matter how much homework I have,” Sinali said with a laugh. When he decided he wanted to be not just a participant, but a competitor, Sango supported him both emotionally and financially. “
Sinali has an abundance of talent, and is quite lucky to have a very supportive mom in Tatiana. She’s both a mom and manager,” said his coach of three years, Susan Marais.
According to Marais, Sinali needs the strict schedule to achieve his goals. “As a skater, he’s very determined and works extremely hard.” He’s doubled his talent in the past year alone and competes in sections that are for older skaters. But he’s still a young boy and like a yo-yo sometimes, so we have to keep him on track.”
Sinali enjoys watching and skating in international competitions because there are many more males in that space than in South Africa. “Grades one through four there were those people who would sort of question me, but I would ignore it,” he said.
“Obviously men do figure skate and they’re really good at it.” Though some teased him, they also tried to copy him. Sinali said that he once went to a friend’s birthday at the ice rink. When he did a couple of tricks, others tried to copy him.