Shaili Singh with Italy’s Olympic excessive bounce champion Gianmarco Tamberi in Slovakia.
| Picture Credit score: Particular association
Shaili with coach Robert Bobby George in Slovakia.
| Picture Credit score:
Particular association
The setting was inspiring, proper subsequent to 500-year-old Cathedral of St. Elizabeth — one of many oldest Gothic cathedrals in Europe — and it was Shaili Singh’s first avenue competitors. There was peppy music too on the JBL Jumps Fest, held on Alzbetina Avenue within the Slovakian metropolis of Kosice on Thursday evening, and athletes got the choice of selecting their very own musical numbers.
Shaili selected a Punjabi tune for her jumps and, since Italy’s Olympic excessive bounce champion Gianmarco Tamberi had promised the Indians that he can be watching their occasions, she was clearly within the temper.
The 20-year-old Asian silver medallist, presently the nation’s No. 1 lengthy jumper, produced a 6.43m within the fifth spherical, to take the silver behind Bulgaria’s former under-20 World champion Plamena Mitkova (6.70m) within the meet, a World Athletics Continental Tour (bronze) occasion.
In the meantime Commonwealth Video games champion Eldhose Paul took the boys’s triple bounce bronze with 16.45m whereas Praveen Chithravel, the Asian Video games bronze medallist and nationwide document holder (17.37m, Might 2023), was sixth and final with 15.92m, his poorest end result this season.
Because the Jumps Fest was a class ‘C’ occasion, the Indians have been hoping to select essential factors which may assist them safe berths to the Paris Olympics via the World rankings route.
However the athletes have been left shattered on Friday with the World Athletics marking all the outcomes of the JBL Jumps Fest as UNC (uncertified) although it didn’t supply any clarification for this transfer. Which implies that the world-ranking factors picked from Slovakia wouldn’t be added to their Street to Paris rankings.
“The jumps have been held on a barely elevated runway however this can be a WA Continental Tour occasion so I don’t suppose that might be the rationale for the ‘UNC’… certainly they’d have appeared into it earlier than the meet,” Robert Bobby George, Shaili’s coach, instructed The Hindu from Geneva on Friday.
“Shaili will likely be competing in Atleticageneve in Geneva on Saturday however now it will likely be robust for her to qualify for the Olympics. Tomorrow’s occasion will likely be her seventh competitors in a little bit over a month, in about seven international locations. She is younger, I don’t wish to push her exhausting, it may result in accidents. I’ve instructed her to only benefit from the competitors…this European tour will likely be a superb expertise for her.”
Adille Sumariwalla, the president of the Athletics Federation of India and in addition World Athletics vice-president, has now written to world physique concerning the ‘UNC’ problem.
“I’m making some enquiries, have written to WA…I’m not in India,” Sumariwalla instructed The Hindu.