In 1980, Adille Sumariwalla represented India at the Olympics and stood seventh in the final standings for the 100m sprint. Besides this, the current president of the Athletics Federation of India has 11 titles under his belt at the National circuit. Yet, cut to 2019, where all it took him was a second to declare how none of it mattered. The matter at hand presently concerns one of India's finest young athletes- Tejaswin Shankar. The 20-year old high jumper, to his credit, has maintained an impressive standard National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) competitions in the recent past. February saw him equal his own National High Jump record set at last year's Federation Cup as Shankar won the title at the Big12 collegiate meet representing Kansas State University and ending up with a season-best jump of 2.28m in the indoor event. Yet, he was left out of an Olympic-qualification event because his prowess in the domestic circuit did not seem worthy of a chance at the Asian Athletics Championships. In a country like India, where even the National Games are not held on a priority basis, a sentence like "I don't consider he will win a medal" because national titles "are of no value" is an astounding thing to say- especially for the president of a National Federation. Sumariwalla later mentioned in a reply to Tejaswin Shankar on social media that he had been misquoted and taken out of context. But multiple media outlets reporting the same thing seems to have stumped that particular argument. Neeraj Chopra Tejaswin Shankar was a big name who did not participate as, according to his communication with the AFI, "I will have to miss my final exams in April since it coincides with the Asian Athletics Championship. So I have to appear for this one. I can’t miss both, my professor wouldn’t allow it.” (quoted by Indian Express). The plan was made keeping in mind the possibility of participating in the upcoming Asian Championships. It is worth noting that the qualification mark set by the AFI for the High Jump event was 2.25m- a mark Tejaswin has achieved twice in four indoor meets this year. The AFI seems to be sticking to its stance of not allowing him to participate in the Asian Championships because of his failure to make an appearance in the five domestic events it had slated as qualifiers for the Asian C'ships. But to say something as blatant as the irrelevant status of National championships is a comment not just on the athlete in question but over India's general importance given to National tournaments.