Bangkok, Jul 13 (PTI) Tejaswin Shankar on Thursday won his maiden international decathlon medal — a bronze — in the Asian Athletics Championships but he is not leaving high jump in the near future and wants to compete in his “bread and butter event” in the Olympics and World Championships.
Tejaswin is still in the frame for the Budapest World Championships in August as he is currently at the 31st spot (out of 36 to compete) in world rankings.
Besides those who automatically make the cut by achieving a qualifying mark, athletes can also enter the showpiece through world ranking points.
“I was doing 2.26m in high jump regularly but I was not able to cross 2.30m. There was stagnation (in high jump) and so I wanted something new and took up decathlon,” Tejaswin said at a virtual media interaction after winning the decathlon bronze with 7527 total points.
“At the Asian level (Asian Championships and Asian Games), I want to continue with decathlon. But high jump is still my bread and butter event. In the Olympics next year, I want to qualify in (individual) high jump,” added the Delhi athlete.
The 24-year-old, who won a high jump bronze in the 2022 Commonwealth Games, said he would like to discuss with the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) on how to go about it regarding his chances for the World Championships.
“In World Championships also, I want to do high jump. I am currently at 32nd (31st) in the world rankings (in Road to Budapest) prepared by World Athletics. I want to take advice from the AFI in this regard.” He picked shot put, pole vault, discus throw and javelin as events he need to improve if he wants to score high total points consistently. The other events are 100m race, long jump, high jump, 400m race, 110m hurdles and 1500m race.
“I am in decathlon for just one year and I will learn as I get more exposure. I would want 4.10m or 4.20m in pole vault. I improved in javelin here.” In fact, this was Tajaswin’s fourth decathlon competition in his career. He had won gold with 7576 points in the National Inter-State Championships last month and breached the Asian Games qualifying mark of 7500.
Meanwhile, AFI president Adille Sumariwalla said that the selection committee will meet on Friday to pick the Indian athletics team for the Hangzhou Asian Games.
Under the Olympic Council of Asia’s directive, all the countries will have to submit the entries of their athletes by July 15.
“I still say that the policy of the Asian Games organisers to ask the member countries to submit entries two months in advance by July 15 is ridiculous. This I had raised also at the Congress of Asian Athletics Association here.
“We will have our selection committee meeting tomorrow. We will continue to monitor the performance of our athletes. The gold winners here will get direct entry to the World Championships.” Under the World Championships qualifying criteria prepared by World Athletics, area champions qualify for the showpiece on the condition that there is no better entry (by world rankings) of another athlete from the same area in the same event.
The 2023 World Championships period ends on July 30 while the 2024 Olympics qualifying period started on July 1 for the majority of events.
Source: PTI News
