From Mudalur to the world stage, Jeswin Aldrin is breaking the mould

Aldrin’s journey to the top has much to with his upbringing as much as his talent.

Published : May 26, 2023 13:07 IST - 13 MINS READ

Leap of faith: Jeswin Aldrin competes in the Men’s Long Jump qualification on day one of the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 at Hayward Field last year.
Leap of faith: Jeswin Aldrin competes in the Men’s Long Jump qualification on day one of the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 at Hayward Field last year. | Photo Credit: AFP
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Leap of faith: Jeswin Aldrin competes in the Men’s Long Jump qualification on day one of the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 at Hayward Field last year. | Photo Credit: AFP

Until very recently, the village of Mudalur in Tamil Nadu had just two claims to fame: its churches and a treacly sweet confection known as Muscoth Halwa. Now there is Jeswin Aldrin, who, many believe, may be the next big thing in track-and-field.

The young man who broke India’s long-jump national record with a leap of 8.42m at the National Jumps Meet in March this year has shown potential to put Mudalur on the global map. He currently leads the world in outdoor competition this season.

Once you are in this quiet coastal village, it’s easy to find Jeswin’s home. Just ask around for Blessing Street and stop across the large billboard for the SJ Muscoth Halwa factory. That address tells you a lot about the world that this 20-year-old grew up in and one that he had to grow out of too.

Religion has always had an outsized role to play in Mudalur. The village gets its name, which literally means first village in Tamil, from the fact that it was the first purpose-built Christian settlement in this part of South India over two centuries ago.

The main streets in the village, just like the one where Jeswin’s home is, are all named after religious precepts. There are seven major churches and multiple sects catering to a settlement of around 4500. Even among the devout in Mudalur, Jeswin’s own denomination, the Pentecostals, stands apart due to the severity with which they practise their faith.

In contrast to other sects, the Pentecostals gather for prayers multiple times a week. Their churches are austere, and their beliefs are equally so. Ostentatious behaviour is frowned upon. There are no TVs at Jeswin’s home, and his ever-expanding trove of medals still doesn’t have a display cabinet.

Instead, posters with biblical passages are put up on the walls. Sport wasn’t forbidden, but it certainly wasn’t encouraged. “Playing is seen as something wasteful. The purpose of life is to be devoted to prayer or business,” says Simon Isaac, Jeswin’s uncle.

Business in Jeswin’s family means Muscoth Halwa. The coconut milk and cashew nut-based sweet was first made by Jeswin’s great-grandfather, Joseph Abraham, in 1966 from a recipe he learned in Sri Lanka. The factory across from his home is run by his father, Johnson, while his uncle, Simon, handles sales and marketing.

Mom’s the world: Jeswin’s mother, who once forbade him from competing, now earnestly follows his every competition.
Mom’s the world: Jeswin’s mother, who once forbade him from competing, now earnestly follows his every competition. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
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Mom’s the world: Jeswin’s mother, who once forbade him from competing, now earnestly follows his every competition. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

On the signboard above the factory is a quote that pays tribute to the family’s faith. It reads, “All his grace”. And indeed, business is booming. The sweet might have been a regional delicacy, but it’s gone global now. “I’ve been told it is one of Chief Minister Stalin’s favourite sweets,” says Simon. One tonne of the sweet is packaged in the factory each day, and an increasing percentage of that is exported.

It’s in this world of prayer and work that Jeswin, the eldest of three sons to Johnson Isaac and Esther, was born and expected to follow as well.

When he now sees himself crisscrossing the globe for tournaments, rubbing shoulders with Bollywood and sporting elites at white-tie award functions, competing with the best in his field at the World Championships, and being singled out for praise by Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra, it is something he can hardly contemplate. “I don’t think I could imagine the world I live in now,” he says.

Jeswin might have never known this other life he now inhabits if he hadn’t discovered a love for athletics in school. He was always a sporty kid, spotted on the school grounds more often than in the classroom at Daniel Thomas High School in Mudalur. Nicknamed ‘Halwa’ by his classmates owing to his family’s business, Jeswin was part of the school’s kho-kho and volleyball teams and was a decent runner as well.

For the most part, Jeswin’s parents let him indulge his passion for athletics if his priorities remained his studies and his faith. It was a compromise that Jeswin accepted. He says his enthusiasm for athletics was partly because it let him escape the stifling nature of his day-to-day life.

Competition also gave Jeswin a chance to travel out of his village and away from the restrictions that he had to live with. “There was a time when the school kids travelled for a competition, and we couldn’t find where Jeswin was. Only after some time did we discover that he was standing near a shop that had a TV screen, and he was just glued to it,” says Anitta Irene, one of Jeswin’s PT teachers.

Jeswin can now smile when he thinks about those days. “We weren’t allowed to have a TV at our home. So, when we went to a competition, that was the only time I got to watch TV. There would be times when others would go out to the market or to eat, but I would just be happy because I got to watch TV,” he recalls.

It wasn’t always an easy compromise to maintain. Jeswin wasn’t always allowed to travel for competitions. “If it was on Sunday, for instance, I would never have been allowed to travel. But I remember there was one time when I was in 7th grade and wanted to compete in the divisional championships, and my mom didn’t let me go. Then the next year, the same thing happened. I cried so much that finally she allowed me, and my father arranged a vehicle for me to go and compete,” he says.

There wasn’t a happy ending in this story, for by the time Jeswin reached the competition venue, all the jump events were over. But his willingness to stand up for himself and fight for the opportunity to be allowed to compete was significant. It wasn’t just a fascination with forbidden entertainment that drew him to athletics. “I loved sports because it let me be myself. It was the one place where I could really express myself,” he says.

Jeswin didn’t always specialise in the long jump. In his early days, he would compete in the high jump as well. His coaches did what they could to support him. “We got a jump pit stitched at a local furniture store just for Jeswin. We used fixed poles to put the bar on. It was tough to procure a jumping pit for just one student, so we managed with what we could. I think that is one of the reasons Jeswin moved to long jump,” Irene says.

Johnson believes the long jump was always Jeswin’s true calling. He recalls Aldrin making a dash to the long jump pit to watch as soon as he had finished the high jump competition at junior meets.

Jeswin didn’t take much time to pick up the long jump technique and soon started accumulating gold medals in almost every meet. Benson, a volleyball coach at Jeswin’s school, feels no one but the youngster deserves credit for becoming one of the finest athletes in the country. “He used to come and practise for hours on the school grounds. On weekends, he used to go to Anna Stadium, more than an hour away, to practise on the synthetic track. Most kids in our school don’t even know what a synthetic track is yet. But Jeswin used to go there so he could improve his technique,” Benson said.

Business class: Nicknamed ‘Halwa’ by his classmates owing to his family’s business, Jeswin was part of the school’s kho-kho and volleyball team and was a decent runner as well. 
Business class: Nicknamed ‘Halwa’ by his classmates owing to his family’s business, Jeswin was part of the school’s kho-kho and volleyball team and was a decent runner as well.  | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
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Business class: Nicknamed ‘Halwa’ by his classmates owing to his family’s business, Jeswin was part of the school’s kho-kho and volleyball team and was a decent runner as well.  | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Jeswin’s obsession with jumping saw him testing the limits in more ways than one. “We couldn’t watch sports on TV, but my parents had bought a computer for use in the halwa store. Without telling my parents, I would watch videos of long jumpers and Olympic champions on the computer. I saw the video of Mike Powell jumping 8.90 m, and I realised how far that was,” he says.

Despite his persistence, Jeswin was still a long way from the elite athlete he is today. “I was around 15 years old when I first learned what the (then) junior national record was (7.97m by K Premkumar). I couldn’t believe someone could actually jump that far. At that time, I hadn’t even crossed 6m,” he says.

He still had self-belief, though. “Even though I was so far from the national record, I remember telling my PT teacher that one day I’d make the record myself. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I knew I would. I’m very competitive in everything. I just have to be the best. If I’m not, I will try to figure out how I can be the best. I just don’t like other people winning. It seems crazy, but even when I was in Mudalur, I had this belief that I would become an Olympic gold medalist,” he says.

For Jeswin, the chance to make that ambition a reality came when he was scouted by Anthony Yaich at the U-18 National Championships in Ranchi. He only took second place with a then-personal best of 7.32m, but Yaich liked what he saw and wanted the youngster to come and train with him at the Inspire Institute of Sport in Bellary, where he had recently started working.

At first, both Jeswin and his immediate family were wary of the move. Travelling for competition was one thing. Moving to what seemed completely different at that time was an entirely different matter. “We drove from Mudalur to Bellary. That was a long journey. The campus was so different from life in Mudalur. There was some reluctance among both Jeswin and his parents. He was nervous about going away from home. His mother was really worried about the fact that there was no Pentecostal church where he lived. I really had to convince them that this was the best idea,” says uncle Simon.

Two and a half years older than Jeswin’s father, Simon had himself left the village in his youth to earn a degree in IT and had worked abroad in the field while also handling marketing for the halwa business. He felt Jeswin needed to move out. “Mudalur is a perfectly fine place, but it is too small for a boy of Jeswin’s ability. He had to go out if he wanted to realise his potential. IIS had the facilities, and more importantly, Anthony had the belief that Jeswin could be something special,” says Simon.

And so, finally, Jeswin did.

At IIS under Yaich and now, more recently, under Cuban Olympic medalist Yoandris Betanzos, he honed his technique. Instead of the hang technique, which was simpler to learn but limited his performance, he has now started to master the double hitch kick technique, where the jumper makes two cyclic kicks while airborne.

Special talent: Jeswin didn’t always specialise in the long jump. In his early days, he would compete in high jump events as well. He didn’t take long to pick up the long jump technique and soon started accumulating medals. 
Special talent: Jeswin didn’t always specialise in the long jump. In his early days, he would compete in high jump events as well. He didn’t take long to pick up the long jump technique and soon started accumulating medals.  | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
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Special talent: Jeswin didn’t always specialise in the long jump. In his early days, he would compete in high jump events as well. He didn’t take long to pick up the long jump technique and soon started accumulating medals.  | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

He’s changed in other ways too. Warm and gregarious with close friends, Jeswin had a reputation for being a bit aloof when he first arrived at IIS, with a penchant for monosyllabic answers. But this was only partly true. “For a long time, I had no real opinions on culture, films, or politics because I had no idea what they were. I had no exposure to it. It’s only when I got a phone that I actually got an understanding of what people were talking about,” he says.

Like many youngsters of his generation, he’s an anime fan now, binge-watching episodes of Blue Lock on his phone. But jumping remains his primary love. While he has pictures of his favourite characters from the anime One Piece on his phone, his wallpaper is the number ‘8.60m ‘– the distance he’s now looking to clear.

While he’s already the world leader with his jump of 8.42m right now—a result that has also qualified him for the 2023 Worlds—it’s a mark that is still early in the season. If he does get anywhere near 8.60m though, he will be a contender for the podium at the world level.

Jeswin’s already competed at that level, having taken part in the 2022 Worlds in Eugene, Oregon. Although he didn’t advance out of the group stage with a best effort of 7.78m, the experience was an eye-opening one for him. “That was my first major competition. I got to jump alongside the guys I had only seen on TV. I even spoke to Mike Powell, whom I once used to secretly watch on the computer. He even recognised me. He said, ‘You are that guy from India, aren’t you? Keep up the good work’. He even posed for a picture with me,” says Jeswin.

But Jeswin isn’t nearly satisfied with just a picture. “I came 20th at the World Championships. It was a great experience. But it isn’t enough. I knew that if I did everything right in training, I could take my place on the podium. Right now, I can see how I am improving with every training session. That’s what makes it exciting for me. I don’t get bored with training. I want to do it again and again,” he says.

Jeswin doesn’t say as much, but he has another point to prove this time around. Although he met the qualification standard set by the Athletics Federation of India to compete at the Commonwealth Games with a clearance of 8.26m at the Federation Cup early this season (he also had a jump of 8.37m that wasn’t eligible for a record since it was wind-aided), a dip in form saw him being denied the chance to compete in Birmingham.

Instead, he was asked to compete in ad hoc trials and told he would only get a chance to be a part of the Indian team if he cleared 8m. He tried once in Trivandrum and then once more in Patiala, and although he came close on both occasions, he ultimately fell just short.

It was a difficult time, but Jeswin’s made peace with it. “There were things in my last season that were bad for me. I don’t want to go through it again. What I learned is to leave as little as possible to chance. This time, I am giving everything I can to be my best. If I do everything well in training, I know I can be a great jumper,” he says.

His family believes it as well. “They support me completely now,” says Jeswin. While his father now knows the intricacies of technique, his mother, who once forbade him from competing, now earnestly follows his every competition, even if on a mobile phone, since their home still doesn’t have a TV.

“I make it a point to watch every time he has a tournament. I know what his position in the world is and who his competitors are. I pray for him before every competition,” she says. While his parents have come to appreciate what he does, Jeswin, whose Twitter bio reads ‘Gods’ plan’, hasn’t lost touch with his roots. “Before I went to IIS, my mom gave me a Bible, and I still read it. I still pray before I go to sleep. Before I jump, I give thanks to God for giving me the ability to jump. And while I’m not able to go to church when I am training, my mother makes me make up for it whenever I go home,” he says.

Indeed, Jeswin believes he is finally doing what he was meant to do. “He put me here to compete and create history. Every day when I wake up, I say a prayer thanking him for giving me this opportunity to be able to fulfil my potential. Jumping is something that allows me to be free. If I stayed in Mudallur, I couldn’t be free. I wanted to be free in my life. To do what makes me happy. There is nothing holding me back. Only my dreams,” he says.

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