Anju Ma'am wants me to break her national record

I am very happy that I have just won my first senior medal in an international event. It is not just about winning medals, it is very important to keep competing against better and accomplished competitors. One gets to pick how these established stars behave, prepare before jumps, how they train or warm up. In that sense, I got to see Australia’s Brooke Straton, who competed at the Tokyo Olympics and finished seventh, from up-close. As athletes, we train hard to compete against the best, to show that we are in the mix. So, overall, I was satisfied with my performance at the Seiko Golden Grand Prix in Yokohama, but in retrospect, I think I could have done much better.

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I was down with Covid before the competition and that may have affected my performance. I was quarantined for seven days and I could not train. I missed the Junior Federation Cup for the same reason. In Japan, I felt fit but I was told by Bobby Sir (Robert Bobby George), my coach, that he could see my legs tightening before the jump. However, I do not worry about these things, as I know I have the best of resources to catch up on lost time.

Last year was very challenging for me as injuries stalled my progress. First, a stress fracture in my back during the Junior World Cup stopped me from competing and then a toe fracture happened. There were a lot of niggles that kept me away and I was upset as I was doing the rehab and all that was needed to get back to training, and yet I was not able to return to action. Now, when I look back, I treat that time as a big lesson. Suffering an injury-filled season was a bad phase for me, but it taught me that injuries are a part of our lives and that I need to have more patience.

A similar thing happened in 2021, when our training and competition got disrupted due to the pandemic. Life moves on.

The next tournament for me will be the inter-state athletics meet in Bhubaneswar next month. Before the start of all the tournaments, Bobby Sir will set a target for me to clear and I will do my best to cross that marker. Ever since I became a long jumper, I have had this urge to increase my jump bit by bit, 1 centimetre to be exact. In some attempts, I was not successful but I keep trying. We have a saying, ‘Har din tumhara nahi ho sakta aur har din tumhare competitor ka nahi ho sakta hai (you cannot win all the time, neither can your competitors).’

Ever since I broke the junior national record (5.94m in Ranchi) in November 2018, people expect me to jump better and set new records.

I have already qualified for the Asian Games to be held in China, the next target is to qualify for the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, this year. The qualifying mark is 6.85 metres, so to get there, I would need to break the national record of 6.83m set by my mentor, Anju Ma’am (Anju Bobby George, who is married to Robert). Both Bobby Sir and Ma’am are confident that I will break that record one day. It is their dream that a student from their academy should break that longstanding record and I am up for it.

However, there is another way to qualify for the Worlds. It is through world ranking. My medal has helped me to jump to 27th from 46th in the Road to Budapest standings. If I improve further, I will qualify for the World Championships.

Sometimes, I feel I am blessed as there was no reason for them to select me. I had only finished fifth in the U-14 championships and there were girls who did better. Still, they selected me and till then I had not trained to be a long jumper. I joined the KD Singh Babu Sports Hostel, Lucknow, to train in long jump. However, we had no coach so I had to train as a long distance runner. I got selected for the long jump as I entered the trials and did well. To come this far is a dream. These things do not happen all the time.

They are special people. Sometimes I do want to ask them the reason why they selected me but I have not been able to do so. Maybe I will never ask why, but I am very grateful that I have both of them in my corner.

— As told to Vinayak Padmadeo