Tejaswin is back fighting gravity, with eye on 2.33

Having won silver in decathlon at Asiad, the national high jump record holder is resetting as he eyes qualification at Paris

- Rutvick Mehta

Having lived the high of winning an Asian Games decathlon silver in October, Tejaswin Shankar relished the downtime. That involved allowing himself the occasional chole bhature meal, catching up with friends, socialising with fellow competitors during the National Games in Goa. And getting engaged.

“It was important to get the job done at the Asian Games, and then it was important to just live for the next one month. Just have a blast,” the 24-year-old said.

The training spark lit up again, Tejaswin is back to getting his body up and running and building a foundation to sustain “a lot of competing” next season. Not in decathlon, where his 7,666 points in Hangzhou broke the national record but in high jump, where he is the national record holder and a 2022 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist.

Tejaswin is set to head back to the US to his earlier training base in Kansas City this month and stay there for the first half of 2024.

"Next year, there's only one goal the Paris Olympics," he said. To get there, the acutely selfaware Tejaswin realised decathlon was a long shot. So high jump, his favoured event before he switched to decathlon solely with the Asian Games in mind, has taken centre stage again. Tejaswin competed in just one standalone high jump meet this year - an indoor event in Boston in February and won, jumping 2.26m.