File picture of Praveen Chithravel.
| Photo Credit: VELANKANNI RAJ
With the nation’s high triple jumpers in nice kind final 12 months, three months in the past triple jumper Praveen Chithravel predicted that the National record might fall early this season.
In 2016 when Renjith Maheswary broke the National record, elevating it to 17.30m in Bengaluru a month earlier than the Rio Olympics, many rubbed their eyes in disbelief.
But Chithravel spoke of a lot larger issues in a chat with this author from his coaching base, the JSW Inspire Institute of Sport, in Ballari in February.
“The goal is to do more than 17.40m this year. I need to jump something like 17.40 or 17.50m, that sort of process is going on and it’s going good,” Chithravel, the Asian indoor silver medallist, had advised The Hindu then.
The 21-year-old walked the speak in Cuba on Saturday, breaking the National record comfortably at the Prueba de Confrontacion athletics meet in Havana with a gold-winning 17.37m. The Tamil Nadu teenager had three jumps over 17m (17.14 first leap, 17.07 fourth, 17.37 fifth) throughout that beautiful collection that noticed him climb a rung, to second, in triple leap’s World record this 12 months. That additionally noticed Chithravel qualify (qualification commonplace 17.20m) for the World Championships in Budapest in August.
With Selva Prabhu Thirumaran — the Tamil Nadu teenager had received the under-20 Worlds silver medal in Colombia final 12 months — ending fourth with a private finest 16.59m, enhancing his earlier finest by 44cm, it was a pleasant day for Indian athletics. However, Asian Games champion Arpinder Singh had a disappointing 15.03m and completed sixth in the identical occasion.
It was not clear whether or not Chithravel went via a dope check, an Athletics Federation of India criterion to ratify nationwide information, after his Saturday stunner.
“We normally approve a record only after a dope test. Whether they had a dope control (in the Havana meet), I will have to collect all those details,” National chief coach Radhakrishnan Nair advised The Hindu on Sunday afternoon.
“We also had national records in the men’s and women’s 5000m (Avinash Sable and Parul Chaudhary at the Sound Running Track Fest in California, a World Athletics Continental Tour-Silver event). There, dope test was done.”
