Sreeshankar inspired by Chopra’s talk and walk
NEW DELHI: Murali Sreeshankar has been on a high this season. Having bettered his own national record in April by leaping 8.36m, and consistently clearing the 8m mark, the 23-year-old believes he can contend for a medal at next month’s world championships in Eugene, Oregon. “I am optimistic of a medal chance there. If I get the rhythm right, I am confident of getting the big distance in,” he
said in a media interaction on Tuesday. “Ideally, I’m looking to better my personal best. That’s the first priority. To do it at the world championships will be something.”
Sreeshankar shares the season’s second-best jump with Greece’s Miltiadis Tentoglou, behind Switzerland’s Simon Ehammer’s world leading 8.45m. Performing on the big stage though is a different thing. Sreeshankar failed to qualify for the finals at the 2019 worlds in Doha and at the Tokyo Olympics, after not clearing 8m.
Re-building began soon after Tokyo. A pep talk by javelin ace Neeraj Chopra—they shared the room at the Games village—and hockey goalkeeper PR Sreejesh helped. “Neeraj bhaiya simply said, ‘bhai, I believe in you’ after my poor performance (7.69m). He said I have the world championships and 2024 Paris Olympics to look forward to.”
A week later, Chopra became the first Indian to win an Olympic medal in athletics. “What Neeraj has achieved has transformed the way Indian athletes think. It has done wonders to our confidence. If you look at our long jumpers and triple jumpers, quite a lot of us are jumping over 8m and 17m. Earlier, such jumps were what we aspired for. Now, we do it routinely.”
Sreeshankar’s father-coach Murali overhauled his training methods after Tokyo and by March, he was ready.
He won the season-opening Indian Open jumps event in Thiruvanthapuram (8.17m), came seventh at the indoor world championships in Belgrade (7.92m) later that month, and did his personal best (8.36m). Then, in a quality field in Greece featuring indoor worlds silver medallist Thobias Montler and former U-20 European champion Jules Pommer, he won the International Jumping Meeting in Kallithea with a leap of 8.31m. It was an important step considering that Indian jumpers rarely touch 8m abroad.
Jeswin Aldrin, who has the longest jump by an Indian (8.37m), didn’t clear 8m in two meets in Italy and Spain last month. Sreeshankar puts it down to acclimatisation. “It takes us a while to adjust. Food is a problem because not all of us are used to the continental diet.”