India’s current best is still far from India’s best ever

Nayana James' jump of 6.67 metres at the third Indian Open Jumps competition, was the third-best distance covered by an Indian woman long jumper ever.

Bengaluru: Nayana James completed a jump of 6.67 metres at the third Indian Open Jumps competition in Kengeri on Wednesday. The leap from the 28-year-old from Kerala was the third-best distance covered by an Indian woman long jumper ever. 

Naturally, she had reason to feel confident of booking her berth for the upcoming Paris Olympics. The only snag with her optimistic outlook is that the qualification mark for the quadrennial event is 6.86 metres.

Given that this is only the opening competition of the year, it’s likely that Nayana will better that mark in months to come, but for her to get the tickets to Paris, she will have to put up the best jump ever by an Indian, and some.

Anju Bobby George holds the record for the longest jump recorded by an Indian after covering 6.83 meters at the Athens Olympics in 2004. That record has remained untouched so far with only Shaili Singh coming close with a distance of 6.76 metres at the Indian Grand Prix 4 athletics meet last year.

That the three aforementioned jumpers were present and swapping notes at the Anju Bobby Sports Foundation in Kengeri on Wednesday was poignant because it is going to take something out of the ordinary for India’s women long jumpers to take it to the next level. 

“We don’t get too many athletes with the champions mentality,” said Anju. “It’s rare, and then the system doesn’t help them either. We lose out on a lot of quality talent because they burn out. Poor coaching, bad nutrition, questionable training and so on are some of the reasons.

“We used to have this problem even when I was growing up, but some of us were able to overcome that challenge, and we did that by ourselves. No one helped us,” she recalled

In fact, Nayana has chosen to steer away from being part of the system. She has a personal coach in Pinto Mathew and he sets up a bespoke protocol for the long jumper.

“That’s because of my happiness,” said Nayana when asked about why she isn’t training at a High Performance Centre like the other athletes in the discipline. “I don’t like friction in my life. I know what I want. Simple. The last five years, I have worked on my technique, my running, my posture, my stride lengths, and it’s showing now.”

Though Nayana’s effort was enough to fetch her a gold ahead of Shaili (6.40 metres) at the event, she was confident enough to announce that she could comfortably up that mark in the months to come.

Anju too reckoned that the likes of Nayana and Shaili could get closer to the 7-metre mark, but said it would take a lot of focus on rhythm to get there.

“I remember before the Athens Olympics, I had numerous jumps of over 7 metres during training. It’s very possible and I think these girls have it in them. Also, this is early in the season so they will see a rise in the distance,” she said.

When asked about the qualification mark for her ahead of Athens, she recalls that it was somewhere in the ballpark of 6.70 metres. “… that average changes every four years because jumpers are getting better. We need to do the same, and for that, we need to put better structures in place and take care of our athletes,” Anju remarked.