THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: tributes to Olympian Suresh Babu who passed away in Ranchi on Saturday.
Starting off as a high jumper, winning an Asian Games bronze as a decathlete, and then standing on the top of the podium in the Bangkok Asiad in 1978 as a long jumper, Suresh Babu was one of the Kerala’s most versatile athletes ever.
The affable 58-year-old is one of the few Indian athletes to have won medals in two events in successive Asian Games. He bagged bronze in the decathlon in the Teheran Asian Games in 1974, and a gold in the long jump four years later in Bangkok.
A dominant figure in national athletics in the 70s, Suresh Babu was instrumental in a lot of youngsters taking up athletics in the 70s and ‘80s.
“He had a fantastic style and technique for an athlete,” his celebrated contemporary T C Yohannan told Express. “Standing at 6’3”, he had a great physique for a jumper with a longer lower body. He is the only athlete to have won national titles in high jump, long jump, triple jump and the decathlon.” But, he was more than just an athlete to the athletics fraternity in Kerala.
“He was a good friend and a great human being, always willing to help others,” T C Yohannan said. “His passion for athletics was so deep that he took up coaching after his career was over. He was a prominent figure in the Indian coaching team throughout the 80s.”
His talent was such that he went to the biggest stage of all, the Olympics, at the tender age of 19 in Munich in 1972.
He established himself two years later in the Tehran Asian Games when T C Yohannan became the first Asian to go past 8 metres while taking the long jump gold. The following year, he clinched the title in the Asian Championships in Seoul. He captained the Indian Universities athletics team to the World Universities Games at Moscow in 1973. Leading India in the 1978 Commonwealth Games at Edmonton, Suresh Babu won a bronze in long jump.
He followed up his Bangkok Asian Games golden feat with a silver in the 1979 Asian Athletics in Tokyo and then led the Indian team at the World Athletics Meet in Montreal.
A science graduate, he learnt the basics of athletics at the Infant Jesus High School and Fatima Mata College in Kollam. His first fling at the national-level was as a junior at Jalandhar in 1969.
Three years later he won the national championship in high jump, a title he was to claim for six more years.
Switching from one pit to another, he won the national championship in long jump during the years 1974, 1977 and 1979 and the triple jump in 1974, 1976 and 1978. He won the decathlon titles in 1974, 1975 and 1978. He served with the Sports Authority of India for 25 years before returning to Kerala.