Sreeshankar targets consistency after whirlwind return to circuit

Murali Sreeshankar’s 2025 was a bit of a blur.

- Shantanu Srivastava

The 26-year-old Murali Sreeshankar resumed training in October last year.

(AF)

The long jumper marked his comeback from a career-threatening knee injury with a short, compact schedule that saw him compete in six competitions ina little over two months.He won five of those six meets, crossed the 8m-mark thrice, and achieved his goal of qualifying for the World Championships after securing the 36th and final spot for his event through the World Rankings route.

More importantly, his left knee, which had undergone a surgery for patellar tendon rupture in April 2024, held up. “It was my comeback season and I had two goals going into it—to breach the 8m mark and to qualify for the Tokyo Worlds. That I could do both despite having very little sport-specific training and work volume was reassuring. It was really necessary to get back and be in the mix of best jumpers at the Worlds because 2026 has a number of big-ticket events lined up,” Sreeshankar said from his training base in Thiruvananthapuram.