Hope, leap and jump

Representing India for the first time, at the South Asian Junior Athletics Championship held in Colombo in May 2018, Priyadarshini won gold and created a meet record.
Priyadarshini’s immediate target is the top spot at the U-20 Asian Junior Championship in Japan
Priyadarshini’s immediate target is the top spot at the U-20 Asian Junior Championship in Japan

CHENNAI: It is difficult to handle success when you are just 18 years old. And if the success hits a roadblock and goes downhill almost immediately, it can be a shattering experience. It’s not easy to accept that your success was shortlived, and fate wants you to start over. This is the story of triple jumper Priyadarshini Suresh. 

Representing India for the first time, at the South Asian Junior Athletics Championship held in Colombo in May 2018, Priyadarshini won gold and created a meet record. The icing on the cake was a ticket to the World U-20 Championships in Finland in July, since her timing was good enough to meet the qualifying mark.

All boxes ticked, little did she know that the next day, her jump would be ruled ‘wind-assisted’ and not stand as valid for qualification for the big event. In a matter of hours, her world had turned upside down. “The website did not show anything, nor did the officials inform me. The qualification mark was 12.85m. I jumped 12.90. But the next day I got to know that I did not make it. It just means I have to work harder,” says the resident of Mogappair. But she has a second chance at the Asian Junior Championships in Japan in June. 

Wind assistance is a term in track and field events like 100m, long jump, triple jump. According to the International Association of Athletics Federation rules, the maximum legally permissible wind velocity is 2.0 metres per second. Anything above is considered too much assistance and illegal. Time clocked or distance cleared with wind assistance crossing the limit does not count as record. The same applies for qualifying marks.

A few months before the event in Colombo, the first year student of Madras Medical College did not have athletics on her mind. She had taken a break from field activities for nearly a year because of class 12 board exams. Sinusitis was also troubling her. It was a first hiatus in her fledgling athletics career. So getting back in shape was priority rather than winning a medal, when she went to Sri Lanka. “A lot of emphasis was given on fitness in this comeback phase,” she says.

Priyadarshini is not new to the spotlight. In 2016, she had won silver in the World School Games in Turkey. It was around this time that there was an attempted coup in Trabzon, a city on the Black Sea coast in northeast Turkey. She was the only one in the contingent of 149 children with international calling facility. “I remember answering a call from a parent in India just an hour before my event, asking how the situation was,” she recalled. “I had to clarify that there was nothing to worry. People got misled by a rumour.”

Having a support system is essential when you are aiming to scale heights. An outsider watching her train with a middle-aged man at the University Union grounds in Chetpet might think it is her coach or father. He is both. Businessman C Suresh was an athlete in his college days. Now he trains his daughter. Her mother Kavita, a dentist, is supportive too. Suresh’s father, C Sankaran, had represented India in the World University Games in the 1950s in long jump.

“It is great to have someone who knows you inside out. When I share with him how taxing the day was at the MMC, he ensures I don’t have a long training session,” she says.Priyadarshini’s immediate target is the top spot at the U-20 Asian Junior Championship in Japan that begins in June 7, and make it to the Junior Worlds. But she has one specific goal that remains unchanged in every tournament she participates — bettering her own best. For her, she is, and will be her biggest competitor.

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