M. Sreeshankar.
| Photo Credit: File picture
He has been coaching in Greece for the final one month and M. Sreeshankar has now picked up a little bit of Greek. And because the lengthy jumper landed in Paris on Thursday night for Friday’s Diamond League, he was hoping that the Greek gods would favour him with good climate and situations on the Charlety Stadium.
“The weather has been quite unpredictable this year. Today it looks pretty ideal, hope it stays good tomorrow,” mentioned the Commonwealth Games silver medallist in a chat with The Hindu.
The World No. 8 has an 8.29m soar this season (USA, April) however because it got here with a +3.1 wind, it is not going to assist him to make the qualification commonplace for this August’s World Championships in Budapest the place the automated entry commonplace is 8.25m and the deadline to obtain it’s July 30.
The Paris Diamond League can have a few of lengthy soar’s greatest names, together with Greece’s Olympic champion and World No.1 Miltiadis Tentoglou, Cuba’s Olympic bronze medallist Maykel Masso, Sweden’s World No. 4 Thobias Montler and Worlds bronze medallist Simon Ehammer and that might encourage Sreeshankar to produce a large one.
If one appears on the private and season-bests of the ten jumpers in the fray in Paris, Sreeshankar will begin as No. 4 together with his PB of 8.36m (2022) and SB of 8.18m (underneath authorized wind situations).
“Really excited…all good with preparations. Focusing on the rhythm…once that’s fine, everything will be in sync,” mentioned the 24-year-old who hails from Palakkad.
Jeswin Aldrin, this 12 months’s World chief together with his 8.42m which additionally noticed him seize the National document from Sreeshankar on the Indian Jumps Open in Ballari in March, was additionally supposed to compete in the Diamond League however there’s a change now.
Aldrin (7.85m), who completed second to Sreeshankar (8.18m) in an Athens meet final month as he got here again from Covid, had one other mediocre 7.66m at Venizelia-Chania in Greece after that and has determined to deal with the Inter-State Nationals (Bhubaneswar, June 15-19) which will probably be a choice occasion for the Asian Games (China, September) and the Asian Championships (Thailand, July).
The Sreeshankar-Aldrin battle has the potential to gentle up Bhubaneswar.
