Paris: Murali Sreeshankar secured a third place finish in the long jump event in the Paris Diamond League on Friday. He is the third Indian to finish in the top-three of a Diamond League event after Neeraj Chopra (also the first Indian to win a Diamond League meet and a Diamond League trophy) and discus thrower Vikas Gowda.
This was Sreeshankar’s second Diamond League appearance with the first coming in Monaco last year. There, he had finished sixth with a jump of 7.94m.
Sreeshankar produced a best of 8.09m in his third of six jumps to come behind Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou (8.13m) of Greece and World Championships bronze medallist Simon Ehammer (8.11m) of Switzerland. Reigning Olympic bronze medalist Maykel Masso, of Cuba, finished sixth with a best of 7.83m.
The 2022 Commonwealth Games silver medallist started with two jumps below the 8m mark – 7.79m and 7.94m. The second jump, though, took him to third spot. He then hit his best on the evening in the third jump, of 8.09m, to climb to the top of the chart. Ehammer, though, produced a 8.11m jump in the fourth attempt to take that away from him. Tentoglou then went 8.13m in the fifth jump to further drop the Indian.
Sreeshankar then fouled his fourth and fifth attempts before going 7.99m in the sixth and final jump.
The 8.09m jump is well below Sreeshankar’s personal best of 8.36m. He will now return to India for the Inter-State meet which takes place in Bhubaneswar. Coming into it, he won meets in Greece and the USA.
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