Praveen Chithravel walks the talk, breaks National record in Cuba

File photo of Praveen Chithravel.
| Photo Credit: VELANKANNI RAJ

With the country’s top triple jumpers in great form last year, three months ago triple jumper Praveen Chithravel predicted that the National record could fall early this season.

In 2016 when Renjith Maheswary broke the National record, raising it to 17.30m in Bengaluru a month before the Rio Olympics, many rubbed their eyes in disbelief.

But Chithravel spoke of much bigger things in a chat with this writer from his training base, the JSW Inspire Institute of Sport, in Ballari in February.

“The goal is to do more than 17.40m this year. I need to jump something like 17.40 or 17.50m, that sort of process is going on and it’s going good,” Chithravel, the Asian indoor silver medallist, had told The Hindu then.

The 21-year-old walked the talk in Cuba on Saturday, breaking the National record comfortably at the Prueba de Confrontacion athletics meet in Havana with a gold-winning 17.37m. The Tamil Nadu youngster had three jumps over 17m (17.14 first jump, 17.07 fourth, 17.37 fifth) during that stunning series that saw him climb a rung, to second, in triple jump’s World list this year. That also saw Chithravel qualify (qualification standard 17.20m) for the World Championships in Budapest in August.

With Selva Prabhu Thirumaran — the Tamil Nadu youngster had won the under-20 Worlds silver medal in Colombia last year — finishing fourth with a personal best 16.59m, improving his previous best by 44cm, it was a nice day for Indian athletics. However, Asian Games champion Arpinder Singh had a disappointing 15.03m and finished sixth in the same event.

It was not clear whether Chithravel went through a dope test, an Athletics Federation of India criterion to ratify national records, after his Saturday stunner.

“We normally approve a record only after a dope test. Whether they had a dope control (in the Havana meet), I will have to collect all those details,” National chief coach Radhakrishnan Nair told The Hindu on Sunday afternoon.

“We also had national records in the men’s and women’s 5000m (Avinash Sable and Parul Chaudhary at the Sound Running Track Fest in California, a World Athletics Continental Tour-Silver event). There, dope test was done.”