Murali Sreeshankar wins silver in Asian Athletics Championships 2023, qualifies for Paris Olympics

This is his second-best jump overall with the previous being 8.41m.

India’s long jumper Murali Sreeshankar bagged a silver medal with a best leap of 8.37m at the Asian Athletics Championships 2023 held in Bangkok, Thailand. The Commonwealth Games 2022 silver medallist produced his best jump in the final attempt and in the process also breached the Paris Olympics qualification mark – 8.27m. He becomes the first athlete apart from the race walkers to qualify for the Paris Olympics – the Olympics qualification cycle started on July 1st, 2023.

Murali Sreeshankar wins 🥈 in the mens long jump at the Asian Athletics Championships with a giant 8.37m jump. He had 5 jumps over 8m in the competition. The CWG 🥈 also qualifies for the 2024 Olympics with this jump pic.twitter.com/u2EYj67FBo

— jonathan selvaraj (@jon_selvaraj) July 15, 2023

The former national record holder also surpassed his own personal best mark outside India – previous best result 8.31m in Greece last year.

Murali Sreeshankar’s series – 8.10m, X, 8.12m, 8.11m, 8.13, 8.37m

The athlete from Kerala crossed the 8m mark five times out of six attempts with a lone foul. Yu Tang Lin of Chinese Taipei claimed the gold medal with a best jump of 8.40m – wind reading (-1.1m/s). According to World Athletics website, Tang Yu Lin has breached the 8m mark only thrice overall in his career. In May this year, he cleared the 8m mark and today at the Asian Athletics surprised everyone to win gold.

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Also, the last jump from Sreeshankar from the naked eye looked like crossing 8.50m mark or close to the mark but in the end the measurement came out way below. Nevertheless, after a below average performance in the Lausanne Diamond League, Sreeshankar came out all guns blazing to secure an Olympic qualification spot and a silver at the Asian meet.

The 2023 season has been a fruitful season for the Keralite having won five out of the eight competitions he has participated so far. In particular Murali Sreeshankar has crossed the 8m mark in six of the eight competitions with the rest being IGP 1 and Lausanne Diamond League.