Neeraj Chopra is back in action at the Diamond League leg in Doha on Friday. At this point, everyone knows this: as with most things #GOAT related, what Neeraj does -- or in this case, is about to do -- always makes the news.
A tier below him, though, Indian track and field is quietly quickening its stride. The latest to add to that progress was 800m runner Mohammed Afsal who, last week, broke Jinson Johnson's seven-year-old national record with a stunning run of 1:45.61s while winning silver at the UAE Athletics Grand Prix in Dubai.
He had known it was a good race from the off. "The race was fast, and I understood immediately that [my] time [will be] fast," Afsal tells ESPN. "The Kenyan runner [gold medalist Nicholas Kiplagat] is a 1:44 runner... the more you run with the faster runners, the faster you become."
Afsal's career is a study in perseverance.
After breaking through in the 2013 Asian School Championships (in Malaysia), his next big international medal came a decade later (and it was some medal) a silver at the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023. It had started on a bright note, when after his performances as a schoolboy, where as a junior he won senior 800m bronze at the National Games, the Indian Air Force came calling. His years there, though, were tough: without the school coach who had pushed him to do things he never thought he could, he was a bit rudderless. Compounding that was the fact that he had to manage everything on his own. "You have to do things yourself, buy equipment and manage diet and everything else on your own salary. Because of that there were quite a few times where I could not even send money back home," he says. "[Running] spikes are Rs 20,000, we need to buy supplements, make sure of diet..."
Even though his career meandered along, Afsal kept pushing himself. His parents, especially his mother Haseena, supported him incessantly. A run where he cracked the 1 minute 46 seconds barrier (a marker that he can compete internationally) for the first time, in 2018, gave him the confidence to keep at it. In fact, it came in the in the race where Jinson set the national record; Afsal finished third.
In 2021, came the turning point. Ajith Markose, a coach with the Reliance Foundation, asked him to join them and Afsal's performance ratcheted up. First, they took care of everything: from running spikes to apparel, from diet to physiotherapy, everything suddenly got taken care of by professionals. They also opened up doors that were long closed to him, getting him into competitions across. All he had to do was run... and run hard he did.
The connection with Markose helped, it was of the kind he had with school coach Manoj, the kind that had got him running in the first place. They worked on different aspects of the 800m. "I never used to run the 400s," he says. "In 2021, Ajith sir and Reliance changed strategy, I started running more 400m races, focusing on speed, increased weight training."
The addition of that explosive speed of the one-lapper translated quickly. At the Asian Games he led from the front in both the heats and the final, able to set pace and keep at it with the best of them. But he's also learned that sometimes pre-match strategies simply won't hold up. In the Dubai race last Friday, he was in the middle of a very fast pack before he kicked brilliantly at the end to clinch silver, and the national record.
Spurred on by a disappointing (and by his standards very slow) Federation Cup where he finished fourth and subsequently missed out on making the squad for the Asian Athletics Championships, Afsal's now a national record holder, and he isn't planning to stop any time soon.
"I've worked hard so hard for so long... [always believed that] something will come," he says. "I have always believed that if we work hard, I believe God will help us. I've not worked harder than I have in 2025, ratcheting it up even more: and look, the NR is there." His dream now? "Qualify for the Olympics, run in the final, and do a personal best there."