SHAILI SINGH SCROLLS through her mobile phone, searching for a video clip of the jump that launched her into a new stratosphere, ignoring the chuckles from her mother and elder sister.
"I still don't know what potential Bobby sir saw in her," Shaili's mother Vineetha says playfully, referring to Shaili's coach Bobby George. "It wasn't even a proper jump!"
Far from proper, in fact.
It's a blurry clip from the 2017 Junior National Championships in Guntur.A13-year-old Shaili approaches the takeoff board, wobbling side-to-side and lands an awkward standing jump before falling over.Neither did her technique nor the result, fifth with a best leap of 4.64m, show any promise.
But Bobby, who saw her for the first time that day, noticed something that no one else could. "She had no technique at all," Bobby, who has been coaching Shaili since 2018, admits.
On Saturday, the girl with no technique' who didn't even know what a hitch-kick - a running motion executed in the air, a common and widely-used technique in the modern-day long jump - was will make her debut at the World Championships.
It's another feather in the cap of the 19-year-old, who already boasts of an impressive CV. Seen as the heir apparent to India's first track-and-field World Championship medallist Anju Bobby George, Shaili has won a silver medal at Junior the Worlds, a silver at the Asian Championship and has the second-best all-time India jump of 6.76m.
This story is from the August 19, 2023 edition of Financial Express Mumbai.
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This story is from the August 19, 2023 edition of Financial Express Mumbai.
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