Sreeshankar flogs a ‘dead’ runway for gold in Greece

Sreeshankar flogs a ‘dead’ runway for gold in Greece

It was the first time long jumper M. Sreeshankar was facing the young Jeswin Aldrin after the latter had taken away his National record with a stunning 8.42m in the Indian Jumps Open at Ballari in March.

That massive jump made Aldrin this year’s World leader and one had expected a fierce battle when the two lined up at the International Jumping Meeting, a World Athletics Continental Tour-Bronze event at Kallithea, near Athens, on Wednesday.

But while Commonwealth Games silver medallist Sreeshankar — the defending champion — produced a fine series that had five eight-plus jumps including the gold-winning 8.18m. in Greece, Aldrin had a disappointing day finishing with a best of 7.85m for the silver.

“Sreeshankar felt good and he was expecting something like 8.30m (qual. Standard 8.25m) to qualify for the World Championships (Budapest, August),” S. Murali, Sreeshankar’s dad and coach, told The Hindu from Athens on Thursday.

“But the track appeared to be an old one, the runway was almost dead. Almost everybody appeared to be struggling.”

Aldrin did not reply to messages but put out a tweet on Thursday morning about how he felt.

“No excuses! Just gotta figure out where it went wrong,” it said.