The ongoing National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships in Chennai saw Karnataka's Aishwarya B create a new record for triple jump in the country. Her leap of 14.14 metres broke the 14.11 metres record of Kerala's Mayookha Johny, which was made at the Asian Championships in Japan in 2011.
New Record
Her first jump of 13.84 metres at the event had itself gone past Johny's 13.72 metres, and Aishwarya again cleared the cut-off for the Commonwealth games, which was set at 13.7 metres. She followed it with a 13.16-metre jump and a 14.14-metre jump, breaking the earlier National record, as reported by Sportstar.
The Karnataka-born had marked an improvement of 20 centimetres from her personal best of 13.94 metres. Aishwarya was pleased and said, "I have to thank my coach, B.P. Aiyappa and Pramila and JSW Group for supporting me." She added that she wants to do well in both triple jump and long jump events.
The 24-year-old had already made the triple jump cut for the 2022 Commonwealth Games with a 13.94-metre leap at the Indian Grand Prix at Thiruvananthapuram in March.
Qualified For 2022 Commonwealth Games
Aishwarya received her second record just a day after her first when she cleared 6.73 metres in the long jump competition. She is the second Indian woman to have cleared more than 6.7 metres, after now-retired athlete Anju Bobby George, as reported by Hindustan Times.
According to her coach, BP Aiyappa, she had taken part in the long jump as a way to prepare for the triple jump final on June 13, which was her 'primary event'. He added that he knew that she had it in her because "she was jumping 6.4 (metres) in practice, but this jump "was surprising".
With the final leap of 6.73 metres, she has now qualified for both the triple jump and long jump events at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.