Jumpers Shaili and Eldhose shocked as WA marks Slovakia’s Jumps Fest outcomes as ‘uncertified’

Shaili Singh with Italy’s Olympic high jump champion Gianmarco Tamberi in Slovakia.

Shaili Singh with Italy’s Olympic excessive bounce champion Gianmarco Tamberi in Slovakia.
| Picture Credit score: Particular association

Shaili with coach Robert Bobby George in Slovakia.

Shaili with coach Robert Bobby George in Slovakia.
| Picture Credit score:
Particular association

The setting was inspiring, proper subsequent to 500-year-old Cathedral of St. Elizabeth — one of many oldest Gothic cathedrals in Europe — and it was Shaili Singh’s first road competitors. There was peppy music too on the JBL Jumps Fest, held on Alzbetina Road within the Slovakian metropolis of Kosice on Thursday night time, and athletes got the choice of selecting their very own musical numbers.

Shaili selected a Punjabi music for her jumps and, since Italy’s Olympic excessive bounce champion Gianmarco Tamberi had promised the Indians that he could be watching their occasions, she was clearly within the temper.

The 20-year-old Asian silver medallist, at the moment the nation’s No. 1 lengthy jumper, produced a 6.43m within the fifth spherical, to take the silver behind Bulgaria’s former under-20 World champion Plamena Mitkova (6.70m) within the meet, a World Athletics Continental Tour (bronze) occasion.

In the meantime Commonwealth Video games champion Eldhose Paul took the lads’s triple bounce bronze with 16.45m whereas Praveen Chithravel, the Asian Video games bronze medallist and nationwide file holder (17.37m, Could 2023), was sixth and final with 15.92m, his poorest consequence this season.

For the reason that Jumps Fest was a class ‘C’ occasion, the Indians have been hoping to select essential factors which might assist them safe berths to the Paris Olympics via the World rankings route.

However the athletes have been left shattered on Friday with the World Athletics marking all the outcomes of the JBL Jumps Fest as UNC (uncertified) although it didn’t provide any clarification for this transfer. Which signifies that the world-ranking factors picked from Slovakia wouldn’t be added to their Highway to Paris rankings.

“The jumps have been held on a barely elevated runway however this can be a WA Continental Tour occasion so I don’t suppose that could possibly be the explanation for the ‘UNC’… certainly they might have regarded into it earlier than the meet,” Robert Bobby George, Shaili’s coach, informed The Hindu from Geneva on Friday.

“Shaili will likely be competing in Atleticageneve in Geneva on Saturday however now it is going to be robust for her to qualify for the Olympics. Tomorrow’s occasion will likely be her seventh competitors in a bit over a month, in about seven international locations. She is younger, I don’t wish to push her onerous, it might result in accidents. I’ve informed her to simply benefit from the competitors…this European tour will likely be a superb expertise for her.”

Adille Sumariwalla, the president of the Athletics Federation of India and likewise World Athletics vice-president, has now written to world physique in regards to the ‘UNC’ situation.

“I’m making some enquiries, have written to WA…I’m not in India,” Sumariwalla informed The Hindu.