Kearns • Lap after lap, day after day, Stephen Paul looks up and hopes he’ll soon see the orange, green and white stripes of the Indian flag high above his head.
In his four and a half years training at the Utah Olympic Oval, he’s moved from an inline skating background to learning speed skating to training six to eight hours per day for a shot at the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.
His dream, born on wheels in his native India and honed on the ice that hosted the world’s best in 2002, is to earn that flag hanging from the rafters by competing at the highest levels of the sport in the 500 and 1,000 meter events and more importantly — becoming the first Indian to skate in an Olympic race.