Commonwealth Games 2026: Murali Sreeshankar fixated on six seconds of technique

Speaking from his training base in Spała, Poland, ahead of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, the 27-year-old was candid about his own flaws.

He has jumped 8.38m this season at the Inter-State Championships in Bhubaneswar, his best since a career-threatening patellar tendon rupture two years ago, yet he insists that leap, celebrated by his family and coaches, was far from his finest work.

"I certainly felt after reaching back to my room and when I was assessing my technique and everything, I felt that day was not an 8.38 day," he said.

The problem, he explained, was in the air. Coming off the board, his body drifted into what jumpers call forward rotation, which is the natural tendency of a sprinting body to somersault forward once airborne.

The hitch-kick or cycling technique is designed to cancel it out. On this occasion, it didn't.

"When I went up in the air, my body was in that rotating motion. I somehow managed to land, but it was the first time my body rolled over in the landing. I feel it was an incomplete jump ," he admitted, estimating he left 20-25cm on the table because of it.

That’s a distance which could have handed him back his national record in the event by a huge margin.

It's a startling admission from an athlete sitting on India's second-best long jump distance ever, but it explains why Sreeshankar has spent this season obsessing over the mechanics of his approach run rather than chasing a number.

Long jump looks simple from the stands. A sprint and a leap. But there’s a lot more which goes behind even just the approach run.

Sreeshankar spent his time at the camp in South Africa, perfecting the approach run, which he admits has been a long-standing issue, dating back to his early days in the sport.

"If you go deep into the technicalities, there are like three phases of a long jump approach then a phase of the takeoff," he said.

The three phases he speaks of are – the drive, continuation, and transition. In South Africa, he worked on each of those three aspects separately before stitching them back together, chasing the perfect outcome.

That work has already shown up in results. He recalled a near-foul jump in Chennai that sailed well past the national record mark of 8.42m.

It was, in his words, proof that “a big jump is there within me.”

The 8.38m jump at the Inter States, he says, was just “80%” of how he wanted to execute it.

If the camp in South Africa was about refining his technique, the ongoing preparations in Spala, Poland is about getting used to the famed Mondo track on which he has historically underperformed.

India’s Mondo tracks are limited to the newly built indoor facility at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar and at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi, where Sreeshankar hasn’t competed. It is the same track which will be used in Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games.

So the early days in Poland were about getting used to the track, making the required adjustments before something finally clicked. 

Chasing the feeling, not the number

For all the granular talk of takeoff angles and landing rotation, Sreeshankar stayed firm that he isn't hunting a specific distance.

"I haven't kept any particular mark," he said, insisting that fixating on a number risks unbalancing the very technical process he's trying to perfect.

His definition of a "perfect jump", instead, rests on execution across all three phases — approach, flight, landing.

His personal gold standard remains his personal best 8.41m leap from an Interstate qualifying round three years ago, which he still considers his cleanest execution to date.

What Sreeshankar does concede is that a big jump is coming soon. With his fitness now past the pre-injury levels, improved strength, speed, and the aerial capacity to travel further even after imperfect takeoffs, he believes its only the technical pieces that are yet to align.

“I’m eagerly waiting for that day wherein I connect everything together,” he said. “I’ll get that big jump.”

Four years ago in Birmingham, fans claimed that Sreeshankar was robbed of a gold medal, after a big jump was called a foul. He eventually settled for a silver on countback as gold medallist LaQuan Nairn had a better second jump after both of them registered a best of 8.08m.

The videos from that fateful day still pop up on Sreenshankar’s social media feed, but he is just fixated on getting his six seconds right.