Long Jumper M Sreeshankar has hit the ground running with a solid effort in the Indian Athletics Series – 1 at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru on April 4. It sets him up nicely for the 2026 season which will be headlined by the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July and the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya in September.
Sreeshankar kickstarted the season with a jump series that read 8.03, 7.99, 8.13, 8.15, 8.12 and 8.10. “I am happy with the power I can now generate at the take-off board,” he says as he prepares to head to South Africa for a competition at the end of the month. He pointed out that most of his jumps in Bengaluru were from well behind the board.
The 8.15m effort is his best since the 8.19m leap that fetched him a silver in the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games on October 1, 2023. It was also his best opening competition since 2022 when he leapt 8.17m in the Indian Open Jumps Competition. “The goal is to do well in the two major competitions this year and I believe I am ready to achieve that,” he says.
Clearly, the dark thoughts of having skip the Paris 2024 Olympic Games are distant memories, banished with self-belief and discipline. He reminds himself that walking without a knee brace after the Patella tendon surgery had itself felt like a victory. And the memories of his first leap over 3m keep him bound to the joy of jumping distances.
Of course, he stayed away from competition through all of 2024 and the first half of last year. And for someone who had marked 8.41m in 2023, his comeback in 2025 may not have come across to many as setting the Ganges on fire. But qualifying for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on the strength of his world rankings came as an affirmation that he belonged in that level.
“I knew I had started training late and had not had the usual off-season training, but I managed five competitions in six weeks across Maia in Portugal, Almaty in Kazakhstan and three cities in India to earn qualification for the World Championships,” he recalls. “Though I was unable to get to 8m in Tokyo, I knew that my recovery and rehab had been charted well.”
Sreeshankar credits a conversation in Budapest in 2023 with Neeraj Chopra’s then coach Dr. Klaus Bartonietz for his understanding of how training can be modified with more focus on recovery. “I go back to that chat and with the help of my strength and conditioning coach Dr Wayne Lombard, I have been able to restructure my training now to a session a day for five days in a week,” he says.
“I eat clean, stay away from alcohol and rest a lot. I now train smart, understanding the thresholds of intensity and volume, factoring in a lot more recovery,” the 27-year-old says, revealing a greater awareness of physiology and biomechanics. “I would like to believe that my body has responded well and rewarded me for respecting it.’
Owner of seven of the 10 best Long Jumps by Indian athletes, Sreeshankar is aware of the growing depth in his event. The emergence of Lokesh Sathyanathan has added a new dimension. “Jeswin (Aldrin) pushed me from being an 8.20 jumper to 8.40. I am excited that we now have the depth to nudge one another to make it to global finals,” he says.
This piece was written for the AFI Newsletter, April 2026
