I believe I am a big work in progress, says Tejaswin Shankar Premium

Tejaswin Shankar, who wishes to be the ‘torch-bearer of decathlon’ in the country, achieved personal bests in three events in the Inter-State championship.

Achieving personal bests in three decathlon events, high jump (2.20m), pole vault (4m) and javelin (52.32), in draining conditions to score 7,576 points at the 62nd National inter-State athletics championship in Bhubaneswar and qualify for the Asian Games spoke a lot about Tejaswin Shankar’s potential in inarguably the toughest discipline in athletics.

Trying to make a mark in the grueling multi-discipline sport, Tejaswin, who wishes to be the ‘torch-bearer of decathlon’ in the country, missed out on Bharatinder Singh’s 2011 National record of 7,658 by 10 points to experience a so-near-yet-so-far moment at the Jim Click shootout competition in Arizona, the USA, in April.

Tejaswin wanted to achieve it in his first decathlon outing in the country during the inter-State meet, but in testing conditions he smartly chose to settle for the immediate target of qualifying for the Asian Games. He also put all doubts to rest about his capability of competing well in the Asian championships in Bangkok, which will also be hot and humid, next month.

The big takeaway for Tejaswin’s inter-State performance was that he rose to the challenge after getting a less-than-satisfactory result on the first day of his competition. He pushed himself to win the title.

“Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. I am a solid day one guy. Day one events are all well-suited for me and I score a lot of points but that’s where I lacked in this meet which was a new challenge for me. I have not performed badly on day one before. On day two, all my weak events are there. I usually play catch up on day two events after performing well on day one. That’s why I was really happy that I was able to step up and pull my day two score,” said Tejaswin.

No wonder that Tejaswin, the Commonwealth Games bronze medallist who specialises in high jump and has a personal best of 2.29m, valued his high jump showing at the Kalinga Stadium as it boosted him on a below-par day one.

“There are so many things going on. So personal best in a dedicated event is different, PB in decathlon is different.”