Jeswin Aldrin produced India's best and Asia's fifth-best long jump of all time at the India Open Jumps Competition, which was held at the Inspire Institute of Sport in Vijayanagar, Karnataka on Thursday.
The 22-year-old jumped 8.42m to win the competition, which was the opening event of the Indian athletics calendar. Jeswin went past M. Sreeshankar's 8.36m to snatch the national record and recorded the joint 58th-best jump in history.
The National Record Breaking Jump of Jeswin Aldrin at the 2nd Indian Open Jumps Competition at Inspire Institute of Sport. He set a new national record of 8.42m#IndianAthletes #IndianAthletics #LongJump #NationalRecord #JeswinAldrin #IndianOpen #Jumps pic.twitter.com/FP3DmI53BI
- Athletics Federation of India (@afiindia) March 2, 2023
To give you context on just how big this jump is, sample this:
Jeswin's 8.42m was one centimetre more than what Militiadis Tentoglou jumped to win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics (however, Jeswin had a +1.8 tailwind behind him while Tentoglou had +0.1 in Tokyo).
Jeswin's 8.42m was six centimetres beyond Wang Jianan's jump to win the 2022 World Championships.
Jeswin's mark is also the fifth-longest jump by an Asian athlete in history, just six cms behind the all-time Asian record (8.48m) held by Mohamed Salman Al Khuwalidi of Saudi Arabia, set in 2006.
Jeswin has already qualified for the 2023 Asian Games and World Championships.
Jeswin's jump is well beyond the entry standard for the 2024 Paris Olympics [8.27m] but he has not won his quota just yet as the qualification period begins only on July 1.
Jeswin has been knocking on the doors of the national record for quite some time now, he had jumped 8.37m at the Federation Cup last year, but that record did not stand as it was a wind-assisted jump (+4.1, anything over +2.0 are considered not-legal/irregular jumps). On Thursday, though, his third attempt of 8.42m was perfectly legal.
A sign of Jeswin's steady progression is the fact that he had never cleared the 8m mark with a legal jump until 2022, but achieved that feat four times last year, including jumping 8.26m twice last year, his previous personal best.
This is Jeswin's second title in as many events. He set a new national indoor record of 7.97m enroute to winning the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships in February.
A point to note here, however, is that Jeswin trains at IIS and hence might have had a small 'home turf ' advantage. Historically, Indian jumpers have done well in domestic events where the conditions and track is familiar but have struggled to replicate their performances abroad. It could be due to a multitude of factors: from the pressures of competing against the world's best to the different playing conditions.
Not taking away anything from Jeswin, but this jump will truly translate to something tangible if he can produce something similar in a global competition.