20 new national records in three months: Behind Indian athletics’ winning run | Sport-others News
Three new men’s 100 metres records in two days; men’s 400 metres in sub-45 seconds; 8,000-point barrier crossed in decathlon; a five-decade-old marathon record down from 2 hours, 12 minutes to 2 hours, 11 minutes and 58 seconds. In just over three months, from the end of February until early June, Indian records in athletics were broken 20 times. It’s happening across age groups, too. Nineteen-year-old Pooja Singh rewrote a 14-year-old women’s high jump record, 31-year-old Parul Chaudhary bettered her mark in the 5,000 metres. And half-a-dozen indoor marks have also been improved. Athletics Federation of India (AFI) spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla predicts a good show at the upcoming Commonwealth Games and the Asiad. “We have found cracks in the dam, in time the dam will break. We moved to 29 medals at the Asian Games (in 2023). Now it is only a matter of time,” Sumariwalla said. The records did not happen by accident. The AFI’s decentralisation model, introduced after the 2024 Olympics, which gave athletes freedom to train outside the national camp, played a …
