Praveen Chithravel goes past triple jump national record in Cuba, eye on ratification process

The Tamil Nadu triple jumper qualifies for World Championships, moves to No. 2 in this season’s World list

FILE PHOTO: Praveen Chithravel of Tamil Nadu celebrates after winning the men’s triple jump gold in the 61st National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai on June 14, 2022. | Photo Credit: B. Velankannai Raj

With the country’s top triple jumpers in great form last year, three months ago triple jumper Praveen Chithravel predicted that the national record could fall early this season.

In 2016 when Renjith Maheswary broke the national record, raising it to 17.30m in Bengaluru a month before the Rio Olympics, many rubbed their eyes in disbelief.

But Chithravel spoke of much bigger things in a chat with this writer from his training base, the JSW Inspire Institute of Sport, in Ballari in February.

“The goal is to do more than 17.40m this year. I need to jump something like 17.40 or 17.50m, that sort of process is going on and it’s going good,” Chithravel, the Asian indoor silver medallist, had told Sportstar then.

Dope test is Mandatory. Unfortunately NO dope test was conducted for our triple jumper as per information received. I am toad that the rest have all given their sample for testing to dope control.

— Adille Sumariwalla OLY (@Adille1) May 8, 2023

The 21-year-old walked the talk in Cuba on Saturday, going past the national record comfortably at the Prueba de Confrontacion athletics meet in Havana with a gold-winning 17.37m. The Tamil Nadu youngster had three jumps over 17m (17.14 first jump, 17.07 fourth, 17.37 fifth) during that stunning series that saw him climb a rung, to second, in triple jump’s world list this year. That also saw Chithravel qualify (qualification standard 17.20m) for the World Championships in Budapest in August.

With Selva Prabhu Thirumaran – the Tamil Nadu youngster who won the under-20 Worlds silver medal in Colombia last year – finishing fourth with a personal best 16.59m, improving his previous best by 44cm, it was a nice day for Indian athletics. However, Asian Games champion Arpinder Singh had a disappointing 15.03m and finished sixth in the same event.

It was not clear whether Chithravel went through a dope test, an Athletics Federation of India criterion to ratify national records, after his Saturday stunner.

“We normally approve a record only after a dope test. Whether they had a dope control (in the Havana meet), I will have to collect all those details,” National chief coach Radhakrishnan Nair said on Sunday afternoon.

“We also had national records in the men’s and women’s 5000m (Avinash Sable and Parul Chaudhary at the Sound Running Track Fest in California, a World Athletics Continental Tour-Silver event). There, dope test was done.”