Men’s relay team falls behind after promising highs

Bengaluru: Neeraj Chopra continued to be the buzzword as India announced their squad for the World Athletics Championships on Sunday. The javelin star, after all, is on the cusp of another historic moment as he defends his title in Tokyo this month. However, if one looks beyond the blue-eyed boy, some key absences in the 19-member team are glaring.

Especially for those who watched the men’s 4x400m relay team — under the new coach Jason Dawson — rubbing shoulders with the big boys to finish unprecedented fifth in Budapest 2023. The quartet of Muhammed Anas, Amoj Jacob, Muhammed Ajmal and Rajesh Ramesh broke the three-minute barrier twice to set the new Asian record while breathing down the necks of mighty Jamaicans. From the promising height to not featuring in the next event at all leaves the inevitable question: What went wrong?

Turns out, a lot did.

To put it plainly, they missed the Tokyo berth because they failed to be among the top 16 in the world. Their best timing (3:00.58 at the Paris Olympics) during the qualification period places them 19th in the rankings behind Germany, Italy and Zambia, with the last-mentioned taking the final available spot.

However, a closer look reveals that the successful quartet was never retained after the Paris 2024 disappointment, when it missed out on the final berth by a spot.

That’s because a “civil war” broke out between coach Dawson and senior runners, who allegedly filed a complaint against the Jamaican with the Sports Authority of India over his harsh behaviour and also subjecting them to too much load during training sessions.

“We were willing to walk out of the camp as many of us felt the coach wasn’t respecting us,” a runner, who trained under Dawson at Trivandrum camp, told DH on conditions of anonymity. “His training loads were something we were struggling to adapt to. Many of us were injured.”

Eventually, former 400m national record holder Anas officially walked out of the camp to train with his personal coach. Two of the remaining members decided to train under an experienced domestic AFI coach, while another moved to a private programme in Karnataka, citing rehabilitation for his injury.

‘One-race athletes’

These were seen as mere excuses by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) senior officials, who were not impressed by the culture of athletes not running enough races. AFI spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla recently came down hard on such an approach, blaming the Indian coaches for not making the athletes race enough.

 “Our athletes were all one-race athletes,” said Sumariwalla during the squad announcement conference. “When the coach (Dawson) tried to make them two-race or three-race athletes, they didn’t want to take the load. Again... our Indian coaches were trying to save them, I really don’t know for what.”

The star quartet, of course, was out of the relay team and by May 2025 at the World Relays in Guangzhou, India had a fresh batch of 400m relay quartet (Santhosh Kumar T, Manu TS, Vishal TK and Mohit Kumar), who finished 15th (at 3:03.92) in the qualifying round 1 for an early exit. This was the best chance for them to qualify for Tokyo, as the top 14 were granted a direct entry.

“The result in China was not a surprise,” said one of the runners who was part of the squad. “We somehow reached the competition, as many of us were and are injured. That’s because none of us was used to the training load of the coach.”

While the China setback reflected badly on coach Dawson, Vishal TK came out as his saviour with a national record show of 45.12 seconds at the National Inter-State Championships. The triumph was followed by a placard acknowledging Dawson’s hand in it. The Jamaican saw this as the right opportunity to vent out his anger as well.