Jeswin Aldrin creates Long Jump national record with 5th highest Asian jump

Jeswin Aldrin on Thursday shattered the national record in the men's long jump after he jumped 8.42m at the ongoing Indian Open Jumps competition at IIS Bellary, Karnataka.

Jeswin broke the record of Commonwealth silver medalist Murali Sreeshankar who jumped 8.36m at the National Federation Cup last year.

The mark of 8.42m would have been good enough for a podium finish at the Tokyo Olympics.

In his first outdoor jump of the season, Jeswin started with an 8.05m jump and then matched his previous personal best of 8.26m and later improved by a massive 0.16m to break the National record.

This is not the first time Jeswin has jumped this distance, but this is the first time he has set a national record. He jumped 8.37m at National Federation Cup last year, but it was not considered because the wind limit was higher than 2 m/s.

Later, Murali Sreeshankar jumped 8.36m at the same event with wind assistance of +1.5 m/s to create the national record.

With this attempt of 8.42m, Jeswin Aldrin becomes the fifth best Asian long jumper of all time.

This is the second national record created by the 21-year-old in past 18 days. Earlier last month, Jeswin bagged the silver medal in the men's long jump at the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships in Kazakhstan with a national record attempt of 7.97m.