Long jumper Murali Sreeshankar wins gold at Chula Vista athletics meet

New Delhi: Indian long jumper Murali Sreeshankar bagged the gold medal at the MVA High Performance 1 athletics meet held in Chula Vista, USA.

Sreeshankar recorded his best jump at Chula Vista at 8.29m on Sunday to win the gold. The 24-year-old’s jump was over the World Athletics Championships 2023 qualifying standard for men’s long jump set at 8.25m.

Unfortunately, the effort didn’t make him qualify for the Worlds in Budapest because the tailwinds recorded at +3.1m/s during his jump.

Notably, jumps with over +2.0m/s wind assistance are not logged as official records or qualifying timings in long jump.

Sreeshankar, who has been training in Texas Tech University, Lubbock, started his 2023 season at the Indian Grand Prix 3 in Bengaluru last month, where he won the gold medal with a 7.94m effort.

The meet in the US was his second competition of the year and the first piece of competitive action on foreign soil for 2023.