This could be a year of the big breakthrough for young Shaili Singh. The 19-year-old has taken impressive strides into the senior international circuit and looks.
Well on track for three major competitions this year. It starts with the Asian Championships in Thailand on Wednesday followed by Asian Games and World Championships — she is expected to make the cut through her world ranking.
Her personal best of 6.76m, which she achieved at the Indian Grand Prix in April, is the best by an Asian this season. Japanese Sumire Hata (6.75m) is a close second. That jump also placed her second in the all-time India list behind national record holder legend Anju Bobby George, whose mark of 6.83m still stands tall for 19 years.
Shaili is Anju and her husband and coach Robert’s find and she has been groomed as one who will break that mark. “It’s been only five years since I started the sport and to be able to qualify and compete in Asian Games and other major meets in such a short span I consider myself lucky and it was possible because of my hard work and my coaches,” says Shaili.
“There are expectations from me and I know I have to keep my level up this year and continue the way I have been performing. I can do better. Anju maam wants me to break her record this year and I have the range to do it. That is also a priority for me. So it’s an important season in many ways,” she says.
Since her breakaway performance at the World U20 Championships in Kenya in 2021, where she won silver, Shaili has made gradual progress. There were a few obstacles along — like the stress fracture in back last year that robbed her of defending her junior world title. But this season she has emerged stronger and put her career back on track.
She competed at the Asian indoor championships in Kazakhstan in February (6.27m), and then won bronze at the Seiko Golden Grand Prix – a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold event, in Yokohama, with a jump of 6.65m. It was her first big international competition at the senior level and Shaili was able to hold her nerves in a competitive field that included world No. 8 and Commonwealth Games silver medallist Brooke Buschkuehl of Australia and Germany’s world No. 17 Maryse Luzolo.
“It was a very good competition. There was a Tokyo Olympian (Buschkuehl) in the field who has crossed 7m (7.13m). If you come to such a big occasion and do not do well then it leaves a bad feeling but I was happy that I was able to give a performance in the first jump and won a medal,” says Shaili.
She has been working on her take-off. Even at the Inter-state meet last month where she jumped 6.49m to achieve the qualification standard set by AFI for the Asian Games her take-offs were from far behind the board.
“I have to work on my takeoff and runway. I am working towards getting good lift from the take-off. Last year, I had a back injury and a toe fracture. This season I had COVID in April and it has taken time to recover. In fact, the recovery has been slow. So despite the problems, I have been doing well this season and got good results in IGP.”
If there is one event that Shaili says has taught her a lot, it was her junior worlds medal when she lost the gold by a small margin. “Nobody will understand the value of one cm more than me but I learned a lot from it. The mindset was different. I have moved on.”
Besides Shaili, Ancy Sojan will also compete at the Asian Championships. Ancy won gold at the Inter-state meet (6.51m). “When you have good competition it pushes us to do better. We get the confidence to better our personal marks.”