Thiruvananthapuram  :

Everyone expects that an athlete would have zeroed in on his favourite event by the time he turns 18. But for 17-year-old Sreeshankar M, it was only a few months ago that he realised he was as good at running as he was at long jumps.

Let’s fast forward to Monday. The athlete’s on the podium after setting a new meet record in 100m race in the 6th Olympian Suresh Babu memorial Kerala State Youth Athletics Championship here. And the icing on the cake was that the youngster repeated the same feat in long jump too.

“It was after a long gap that he turned out for 100m race, in fact it is for the first time since the under-12 competitions,” said his father S Murali, who doubles up as his coach. Sreeshankar has sports running through his veins with father Murali, a silver medalist in triple jump at the 1987 South Asian Games, and mother K S Bijimol, an Asian medalist in 800m.

Murali revealed it was through pure chance that he found out his son is also a very good runner. “I recorded his times during sprint training for long jump and surprisingly the speed was excellent. That was when it dawned on me,” said the Southern Railways employee.  The youngster’s performance was not that good at the State Youth Meet compared to the Federation Cup Junior Athletics Meet, which was held last week in Bengaluru, but Murali blames the tight schedule of the athletics calendar for it.

“He had to appear for 100m heats at 5 pm, participate in the long jump finals at 6 and then run the 100m finals just after 7 pm. He even had a strained hamstring to deal with,” Murali said. “People just look at the statistics and say his performance has dipped. But these factors also have to be considered,” he said.

Sreeshankar has the national youth meet, which is to take place later this month at the Calicut University Stadium, to look forward to. However, he is disappointed to have missed out on the world youth championship by a whisker. “He leapt 7.41m at Bengaluru, but missed out on the mark. We will come back stronger next year,” Murali said.

The Rising Star

Hailing from Palakkad, Sreeshankar is the son of former athletes S Murali and K S Bijimol

The 17-year-old broke two meet records  on the opening day of the state youth athletics meet at Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium

Sreeshankar cleared 7.25 metres in long jump and timed 11.08 seconds in 100 metres race

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Adwaidh Rajan / May 10th, 2016