Tejaswin Shankar will not be competing at the 2023 World Athletics Championships, set to begin in Budapest on August 17.
While he has qualified for the men's high jump at the Worlds, he's in tune with reality and says he would rather focus all his energies on preparing for the decathlon at the 2023 Asian Games, where he feels he has a medal chance, than be an "also-ran" at the World Championships.
For context: Tejaswin is India's #1 high jumper and decathlete and is currently dovetailing between the two disciplines.
"You have to be honest with yourself and I am very honest and clear about my chances. My outdoor season's best this year is 2.21m, so how can I expect to jump 2.30m at the Worlds? When I haven't practiced enough, how can I expect to perform there? I see no point in going to the World Championships and jumping 2.16 or 2.20m and coming back empty-handed. I would rather prepare for the Asian Games because I have a realistic chance of a medal there," Tejaswin tells ESPN from Chengdu, China, where he participated in the World University Games.
An Asian Games medal has wider implications for an Indian athlete, ranging from a cash award of ₹10-30 lakh as per 2019 govt. records (while states like Odisha awarded Dutee Chand ₹3 crore in 2018), as well eligibility for other national and state awards and benefits.
Tejaswin's benchmark is Swiss decathlete Simon Ehammer, who won a decathlon silver at the 2022 European Championships and a long jump bronze at the 2022 World Championships. He also had the world's second-best long-jump last year [8.45m].
Anything but average: Why high jumper Tejaswin Shankar is pushing himself to compete in decathlon
"This is a big transition year for me. Eventually, I want to be like Simon Ehammer who can consistently jump 8.20m or 8.30m [in the long jump] and also do the decathlon. But I am not there yet and that is the reality. Nobody is going to care at the world level if I am going to jump 2.15m or 2.16m. If I can jump 2.30m and then come back and do well at the decathlon, then I have all the right to go to the World Championships and be happy about it. But when I am not at that level now, what's the point in going there and being just another "also-ran"," Tejaswin says with conviction.
Tejaswin's personal best of 7648 points in the decathlon, which came in April this year, ranks him #5 in Asia. There are two Chinese and Japanese athletes ahead of him, but he feels he has a real medal shot at the Asian Games.
"I want to take some time off and just focus on preparing for the decathlon at the Asian Games. I am somebody who has done 10 events multiple times this year, so I need to give my body that time to get back into training every event so that I can excel at the Asian Games," he explains.
"You cannot compare me to any other single-discipline athletes who compete week in and week out because the nature of our disciplines is very different. They need those repetitions, but that will just tire me more. I have to focus on the intricacies of each and every event, which is in itself a big task. I need time to spend more time at the drawing board. The more time I spend competing, the more time I am away from doing the real work and hampering my chances of doing well at the Asian Games," he adds.
Tejaswin says he decided to skip the Worlds after having a chat with the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) and India's chief athletics coach, Radhakrishnan Nair. This comes as a stark contrast to the position Tejaswin was in last August, when he dragged the AFI to court after being omitted from India's Commonwealth Games squad.
"The biggest change I felt was when the AFI asked me for my opinion and what I felt about competing at the Worlds. And I was very honest when I said that I really wanted to compete at the Commonwealth Games last year because I knew I was in great shape then and that I could jump 2.27m.
"I said I was keen to participate at the World Championships, but the reality is that I don't know if I am in the physical shape to perform at my best. If I can't perform at my best, and I know that I cannot do it, then I don't want to go and embarrass myself. I'll prepare myself for what I am actually preparing for: that's the Asian Games."