Sreeshankar Murali qualified for the Paris 2024 Olympics, with an 8.37m jump that won him a silver medal in the men's long jump competition at the Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok on Saturday.
It was Sreeshankar's sixth top-three finish in 2023 (including a third-place finish in the Paris leg of the Diamond League), and also the second-biggest jump of his career, only behind the 8.41m mark he achieved at the Inter State Athletics Championships in Bhubaneswar last month. This was also the joint-fifth-best long jump of 2023, with the world lead still belonging to Sreeshankar's compatriot Jeswin Aldrin, who had an 8.42m jump earlier this year.
However, since the qualification period for the Paris Olympics for individual events (barring a few exceptions) only started on July 1 -- and with the long jump mark being at 8.27m -- it's with this jump that Sreeshankar has now qualified for his second Olympic Games. In Tokyo, he had failed to qualify for the finals, with a best jump of 7.69m in the qualification phase.
Met @SreeshankarM after his jump that qualified him for Paris Olympics!!!! pic.twitter.com/XyvhmkPHVm
- Tejaswin Shankar (TJ) (@TejaswinShankar) July 15, 2023
Chinese Taipei's Yu Tang Lin won the gold medal on Saturday with an 8.40m jump. Just like last year's Commonwealth Games - where he lost out on a count-back - it was another narrowly missed gold medal for Sreeshankar. China's Zhang Mingkun finished third with an 8.08m jump.
Sreeshankar recorded five jumps of over 8m in this competition, a marked improvement on his previous outing at the Lausanne Diamond League, where he endured a disappointing showing with a best jump of 7.88m to finish fifth. When he's in rhythm, he's hit unprecedent marks this season. A large part of that has been the stability of Sreeshankar's run-up: The lean-back, as if to wind his body up tight, and the sudden release of that coiled pressure across 17 long strides and then the leap, launching himself off the board high into the air, arms windmilling through the air. That he has hit two of his longest jumps ever over the past two months is telling.
His immediate reaction after the jump that won him silver was a statement unto itself. The look back to see where he had landed, the look to make sure a white flag was raised (to indicate a clean jump) and then something we haven't seen before: a guttural scream that seemed to keep on going.
Now mixing it up consistently with the best in the world, Sreeshankar will want to keep the momentum going into the Asian Games which start late in September this year.