Reports | M Sreeshankar to travel for international athletic meets without coach S Murali

07/05/2019

Long jumper M Sreeshankar’s dad-cum-coach S Murali will not be accompanying him to athletic meets at Almaty and Bishkesh due to limitations on number of personnel allowed to travel. He will instead be travelling with coach Bibu Mathew even though he is pending investigation by the SAI and NADA.

M Sreeshankar has been asked to travel for international athletics meet in Almaty, Kazakhstan as well as Bishkesh, Kyrgyzstan without his dad S Murali who has served as the long jumper’s coach throughout his career. The duo has enjoyed great success together and Murali’s guidance has helped M Sreeshankar establish himself as the greatest long jumper in the country’s history.

The 20-year-old Keralite has huge potential and is expected to do well in the upcoming World Championships in Doha which is scheduled to start from September 28. A good performance there will also help him seal his spot in next year’s Tokyo Olympics which will provide him with a chance to make an impact on the global stage. Sreeshankar currently holds the national record for the longest jump after having recorded a leap of 8.2 meters in Bhubaneshwar last year.

“We fully agree that Sreeshankar is one of our best athletes and he has been producing results too, it is our responsibility to back him. But the quota is there, every time you cannot keep sending everybody. For the last set of competitions (in June), the Sports Authority of India had initially refused to clear Murali but we wrote that the boy is young and needs some support. And ultimately, SAI agreed,” an anonymous AFI official explained on Thursday, reported Sportstar.

Instead, Bibu Mathew will be travelling with the athlete as his coach. He has been under the scanner as of late after being the coach on duty at the SAI centre in Thiruvananthapuram where three jumpers were missing when NADA officials had visited to conduct doping tests. While such matters are taken very seriously by the Athletics Federation of India, Mathews has been allowed to go without any proper investigation into the matter.

“The thing is, we cleared the athletes for the Kazakhstan trip much before all these things happened. That is the only reason why Bibu has gone there,” the official said on the matter.

The meet in Almaty is scheduled to take place on July 6 and 7, followed by the one in Bishkek on the 13 and 14 this month.