M. Sreeshankar.
| Photo Credit: File photo
He has been training in Greece for the last one month and M. Sreeshankar has now picked up a bit of Greek. And as the long jumper landed in Paris on Thursday evening for Friday’s Diamond League, he was hoping that the Greek gods would favour him with good weather and conditions at the Charlety Stadium.
“The weather has been quite unpredictable this year. Today it looks pretty ideal, hope it stays good tomorrow,” said the Commonwealth Games silver medallist in a chat with The Hindu.
The World No. 8 has an 8.29m jump this season (USA, April) but since it came with a +3.1 wind, it will not help him to make the qualification standard for this August’s World Championships in Budapest where the automatic entry standard is 8.25m and the deadline to achieve it is July 30.
The Paris Diamond League will have some of long jump’s biggest names, including Greece’s Olympic champion and World No.1 Miltiadis Tentoglou, Cuba’s Olympic bronze medallist Maykel Masso, Sweden’s World No. 4 Thobias Montler and Worlds bronze medallist Simon Ehammer and that could inspire Sreeshankar to produce a big one.
If one looks at the personal and season-bests of the 10 jumpers in the fray in Paris, Sreeshankar will start as No. 4 with his PB of 8.36m (2022) and SB of 8.18m (under legal wind conditions).
“Really excited…all good with preparations. Focusing on the rhythm…once that’s fine, everything will be in sync,” said the 24-year-old who hails from Palakkad.
Jeswin Aldrin, this year’s World leader with his 8.42m which also saw him grab the National record from Sreeshankar at the Indian Jumps Open in Ballari in March, was also supposed to compete in the Diamond League but there’s a change now.
Aldrin (7.85m), who finished second to Sreeshankar (8.18m) in an Athens meet last month as he came back from Covid, had another mediocre 7.66m at Venizelia-Chania in Greece after that and has decided to focus on the Inter-State Nationals (Bhubaneswar, June 15-19) which will be a selection event for the Asian Games (China, September) and the Asian Championships (Thailand, July).
The Sreeshankar-Aldrin battle has the potential to light up Bhubaneswar.
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