Finding calm in chaos: Tejaswin Shankar balances work and sport, targets 8400 in decathlon
Tejaswin Shankar, working full-time as an auditor in Kansas city, talks about how a fresh perspective has helped him approach the decathlon.
Published : Apr 15, 2023 19:26 IST , New Delhi - 15 MINS READ
FILE PHOTO: Tejaswin Shankar holds the national record in high jump. | Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA/The Hindu
Competing in just the second decathlon of his athletic career, Tejaswin Shankar came agonisingly close to the National record. After ten separate track and field events over two days, the 24-year-old finished with 7648 points at the Jim Click Shootout in Arizona last Sunday. He ended up just 10 points shy of Bharatinder Singh’s mark of 7658 points that’s stood since 2011.
So what was that like coming so close but still falling short?
“You want the media answer or the real answer?” jokes Tejaswin over the phone from Kansas City.
The media answer is the one you give when you just want to look at the sunny side of a result. And to be fair Tejaswin’s performance is pretty good. His score is the second-highest ever by an Indian decathlete. It’s also a new personal best – an improvement of 56 points from the 7592 he recorded at the Big 12 Championships last year. It also far exceeds 7500 points, the qualification mark set by the Athletics Federation of India for the Asian Games. If Shankar matches the same performance in four months time in Hangzhou, he will almost certainly be in the mix for a podium finish. Tejaswin’s media answer was simple: “It was a great feeling. I think I did great.”
The real answer is a lot more nuanced and sobering. “After the first day of the decathlon, you are already on your knees because you are so tired. After two days of competing, you are lying flat on the ground. You don’t want to do anything for the next one week. You don’t want to do this again. I was upset for a bit because to miss the record by 10 points is nothing, but you are so tired, that you can’t even think that much,” he says.
For all his complaints, Tejaswin can’t picture himself doing anything else.
The decathlon is a test of an athlete’s all-round ability – speed, agility, power and endurance. The 10 events are divided equally over two days. The 100 metres, long jump, high jump, shot put and 400 metres are contested on Day One. The 110m hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin and 1500 metres are the events on the second day. Tejaswin’s still a rookie in the event. He only competed in his first decathlon last year, having competed all his life in the high jump, where he is a national champion, prior to that.
What makes it even harder for Tejaswin though is the fact that he’s not just training for his sport. A look at his scoresheet at the Jim Click classic – which mostly featured college athletes - would show that Tejaswin has a ‘non-affiliated’ against his name. Having graduated from Kansas State university last year, he’s also working a full-time corporate job as an auditor in Kansas city.
“My first decathlon was a decathlon but my second decathlon... I think about it as about my life’s transition into a decathlon rather than just about sport. I’m juggling 10 things in life,” he says. Indeed Tejaswin wasn’t just speaking to Sportstar on Friday. He was simultaneously making the two-hour drive from Kansas City to Manhattan, where he trains at the Kansas State university. In a couple of days, he will make the two-hour drive back to make it to office on time.
“I do it because I love what I’m doing . It keeps me sane. I think of these as things that are training me for decathlon on the field. Because if you are doing 10 things in life, then doing 10 things in sport becomes really easy and it becomes really easy to motivate yourself,” he says.
He did have his moments of doubt though. This was especially true when he first came out of the sheltered college environment. “When I was in school, everything was handed to me. If I was hungry someone would be there to feed me. If I needed a massage, all you needed was to raise your hand and someone would come and rub your hamstring. I always had my coach available on call. You had trainers, psychologist. Everything associated with college sport you have,” he says.
Things were different the moment he got out. “The big difference was that when I was a student athlete, I was structuring my day according to my athletics training. Now I had to plan my day around my office work. I had to find time to train in morning. If I had to train, I had to wake up early or stay up late after work. I had to find the time to eat. Those are really important and really hard. At this point, it’s not just about training, but about recovery, food and sleep. Those were things I wasn’t able to do well because I was constantly on five hours of sleep.,” he says.
Off seasons have become things of the past for now Tejaswin has a busy work schedule at the very end of the financial year. “January, February and March are extremely busy for audit firms. That’s when the company numbers are out and you are trying to audit those numbers. Navigating that and then going into the field was hard,” he says.
“During the first couple of months of doing this, I was on the brink of giving up. I was thinking: ‘This is horrible. Why am I wasting my time? Why can’t I just stick with what I’m doing and what I’m already good at’,” he says.
By the time Tejaswin completed his four-year college program, he was already a two-time NCAA champion in high jump, held the national record with a clearance of 2.29m and was also the winner of a bronze medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the same discipline.
Tejaswin Shankar poses for a photo with his 2022 Commonwealth Games bronze medal in high jump. | Photo Credit: VV KRISHNAN/The Hindu
”All these thoughts came to mind. The reality is no one asked me to do this. The moment I realised I’m making excuses not to others but to myself over a choice I myself had made, I laughed. It’s become a routine now. Once things start calming down, I knew it would become easier,” he says.
Indeed Tejaswin adapted to the choice he had made for himself. “There wasn’t any designated indoor training facility in Kansas City. There was one arena where there was a 350m track that I shared with others. There was even an 80-year-old man who would walk over there. That’s where I got my running sessions. It was a bit unorthodox but it worked for me. Ultimately, it’s about getting sh*t done. For some of the technical events which were harder for me like the pole vault, javelin and discus, I’d go back to college and train with my coach over the weekend,” he says.
It was a tricky system to manage but Tejaswin has no complaints about it. “Juggling multiple things, driving around, moving, finding time to train, finding facilities to train while working -- all that made me a lot more resilient and nothing seems like a challenge at this point since I’ve seen a lot of it,” he says.
Tejaswin Shankar wearing a tee shirt which reads: “The Beast Never Stops”, during the the 32nd junior National Athletics Championship in Coimbatore in 2016. | Photo Credit: M PERIASAMY/The Hindu
According to Tejaswin, that resilience that he’s built up and indeed the nature of the decathlon has also given him a new perspective on how he approaches sport. “Finding calm in chaos is the whole nature of the combined events. When I was solely a high jumper I’d get stressed out about one missed attempt. But in the decathlon, there are so many things that can and will go wrong. You can’t have second thoughts about them. The real point is to rise above those things and make up the points elsewhere.. That’s the point of both the decathlon and life,” he says.
But while he appreciates the life lessons his sport has taught him, Tejaswin can also see how close he is to tangible results in the field.
At his most recent competition for instance, Tejaswin would almost certainly have got the national record if it wasn’t for a poor performance in pole vault – an event he had never even attempted until a couple of years ago. After the first day of competition he had 4427 points after recording personal bests in the 100m and 400m events. That would have kept him competitive not just at the Asian but also the world level – in fourth place at the 2020 Olympics for one.
A poor second day and particularly the pole vault cost him. Tejaswin who had a personal best of 3.80m in his first decathlon only cleared 3.60m in Arizona. It’s a finish that’s both disappointing but also motivating, he says. “From a score perspective, I was looking to get about 7700 points. And I was on pace to hit that point if it wasn’t for the vault (If he had matched the 3.80 he recorded last year, he would have scored another 57 points and finished with 7705 points) . I only see that from this point on, I can only improve on this score because if you look at the things I did well in and the things I didn’t do well in there is still so much scope to improve which will happen over time,” he says. “When you look at the technical events like the discus, pole vault and javelin throw, I’ve only really trained for a year. Once those start clicking, I don’t see why I can’t score above 8300 or 8400 points over the next two or three years. That gets me excited and that’s what’s keeping me in the game,” he says.
The next few years will come with their own share of challenges for Tejaswin. For one, after six years in the USA, he plans to move to India. “I plan on moving my base back to India next month. My work eligibility will expire in another month and I think it will be a good chance for me to focus on the sport a little more for the next few years,” says Tejaswin who plans to compete at the Federation Cup next month.
He’s still figuring out how he will approach this new chapter in his life. “There’s a lot of moving parts right now but I think I’ll move to IIS (Inspire Institute of Sport near Bellary), train over there and compete a lot more in Europe,” he says. He has plans on how he wants to train there. While there are doubts regarding whether he will have the same training environment in India as he had in the USA, considering the far inferior level of competition in his home country, Tejaswin thinks his ability to work through multiple obstacles in recent months will allow him to adapt. “The one thing I learned from balancing multiple tasks is that I’m able to motivate myself. My last performance gave me the validation that I don’t need to train alongside other decathletes. There are some really good individual athletes in India. I think I can train alongside them and there’s a lot I can pick up,” he says.