Tejaswin satisfied with silver, Vishal disappointed at missing podium

T.K. Vishal and Tejaswin Shankar reflect on their performances at the Asian Athletics Championships, aiming for improvement and medals.

A personal best, becoming India’s best male quartermiler this season, and a gold in the relay notwithstanding, T.K. Vishal was not ecstatic at the end of Day Two of the Asian Athletics Championships.

The 21-year old, part of the AFI’s plan to revamp the 4x400m relay squad in both men and mixed, admitted there was disappointment at missing out on a medal in his maiden solo international outing but said it was a learning curve.

“Getting a PB (45.57s) is good but I tried my best to get a medal but missed by 0.02 seconds. I am disappointed because now I will have to wait for the next event but this was my first individual international event, I have to take this, learn from it and get better,” he said during an interaction.

Running two tough races inside three hours was not easy but Vishal insisted it didn’t bother him. “I have trained for it, I was prepared and it is only good for me going forward, makes me stronger,” he said.

Decathlete Tejaswin Shankar, on the other hand, was satisfied that he did his best en route to winning silver with a personal best in shot put and 110m hurdles.

“The shot put PB changed the momentum on Day One because I was really in a hole after the first two events and struggling but after that, I thought I could do something going into high jump. Then today I saw Yuma Maruyama, who was a strong contender for gold, trip and injure his neck badly while warming up for the hurdles but still decide to run and try to push through the pain, which gave me the motivation to go all out for gold.

“Getting a PB was the turning point but I wanted to make sure I completed all events. In such championships it’s more about going for the medal instead of trying to go for any improvement in points. You have to stay grounded over two days. In other events, you finish and go back and think what went right or wrong but in decathlon, you think you can’t do anything else, you just want to go home,” he shrugged.