Ahead of the competition, with a critical piece of equipment missing from his kit, Sunil Kumar didn’t think he had much of a chance in the men’s decathlon Asian Junior Athletics Championships.
“I remember thinking I won’t even get a medal over here,” he tells Sportstar over the phone from Busan.
Instead, the 19-year-old, returns to India as a gold medal winner with a new junior national record of 7055 points to boot. Both of those he admits, wouldn’t have been possible without a newly minted friendship with fellow competitor Nam Hyunbin of Korea who lent him the missing bit of equipment.
Competing without the pole!
Sunil came into the Junior Asian Championships at a severe disadvantage. The decathlon consists of ten events over two days. And Sunil arrived in Busan without the fibreglass pole he needed to compete in the pole vault.
When Sunil reached the New Delhi International Airport to board his flight to Busan, he and the rest of the Indian contingent received a rude shock when airline officials said that they would not be permitted to carry the four-and-a-half meter-long poles with them. They wouldn’t be allowed to bring the poles as cargo on a subsequent flight either.
In Busan, Sunil thought that meant his chances were slim. Unlike most other equipment in athletics events, the pole is typically crafted uniquely for each athlete – its length varies as does the amount it can bend.
“It is difficult for one athlete to use the pole of another athlete. It is like you are using someone else’s shoe,” he says.
The bonhomie with Hyunbin
Despite his misgivings, he started his event. There he soon found himself forming a friendship with Korean competitor Nam Hyunbin.
“I didn’t think anything of it. We were just cheering for each other and supporting each other. That’s how it works in decathlon,” he says.
That camaraderie is one of the things that had drawn Sunil to the decathlon, to begin with. Growing up in Sui, a village in Haryana’s Bhiwani district, he had started his athletics journey as a long jumper.
The sport had even won him a scholarship to the Army Sports Institute in Pune. Training there he had won a gold medal in the Indian U-23 championships a couple of years ago with a best jump of 7.10m.
Yet even while he was delivering impressive results in the long jump, he had started thinking of switching to the decathlon.
“One reason was very silly. I had always wanted a Railways job and I had seen a number of decathletes in India who had got Railways jobs. The other reason was that I felt that the decathlon is a sport where everyone is really supportive. Even when you are competing everyone is cheering for the other athletes. You always end up becoming friends,” he says.
That he says is due to the long and gruelling nature of the sport. “Decathlon is a two-day long competition. Do din ikathe compete karte hain. Kaafi lamba time hota hai. Itne time me pata lag jata hai ki dusra insaan sahi me kaisa hai. (We compete together for two days. That’s quite a long time. In that time you get to know exactly what kind of person your competitor is),” he says.
The move to Decathlon
Sunil switched to decathlon in 2021 and started training under former national champion Kulwinder Singh. His Railways dreams are in the past now too. Following an impressive season in 2022 when he won the U-20 Federation Cup and National championships and took second place at the senior open national championships, he was recruited into the Indian army as a havaldar. For all his past results, Sunil wasn’t expecting much in Busan.
From borrowing the pole to finding a new friend, Sunil Kumar scripted history with a new junior national record. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“I knew that I would have to borrow a pole from someone. But because it wasn’t my pole I was thinking I would not get any success or even clear any height. I was thinking 400 points I was going to lose because of that,” he says.
Yet as the first day of competition started he found himself forming a friendship with Hyunbin.
“We were supporting each other from the first event itself. At that time I wasn’t thinking, I’ll ask him for a pole. We were just two athletes competing,” he says.
As the day progressed, and once they had sent and accepted each other’s Instagram friend requests, Sunil says asked Hyunbin if he had a pole he could spare for the next day’s competition.
“He immediately agreed. He didn’t think I was his competitor,” says Sunil.
Indeed the Indian was only in 5th place with 3597 points at the halfway stage with the Korean in bronze medal position at 3654 points at the same time.
The near-perfect pole
In a stroke of luck, Hyunbin’s pole was near perfect for Sunil. “I use a 4.60m pole with a 65 pound weight. His pole was exactly the same height and only five pounds lighter. In this situation I couldn’t have got a better pole,” Sunil says.
He would make it count. Although he finished with a height of 4m, some 20cm short of his personal best of 4.20m, he was still close enough to stay in the hunt. He kept making up points in the discus throw, javelin and 110m hurdles – in each of which he secured personal bests.
He was 102 points behind leader Nodir Norbaev ahead of the final event – the 1500m – and eventually overcame that gap to take the gold medal by 47 points.
It was an unlikely win. But apart from thanking God, Sunil says he was as grateful to Hyunbin.
“I don’t think I can thank him enough. I kept telling him how thankful I was and he was saying ‘bro it’s no problem’. There are times when I have helped people with equipment in the past but I’ve never had someone help me at such an important tournament,” says Sunil.
Despite his win, Sunil admits he was a bit disappointed. Although Hyunbin was in the bronze medal stage, he had a disastrous javelin throw event where he failed to make a single clean throw and scored no points. That result eventually saw him finish in the fifth position.
“I was very sad when he didn’t win any medal. I was hoping at least we could stand together on the podium. But I hope we can compete together again in the future,” says Sunil.
Comments
SHARE