Who is Tejaswin Shankar?

While India has a rich tradition in athletics at the Commonwealth Games, the discipline truly found the light of the day at the 2010 edition of the event. Since then, many Indian athletes have come to the fore, some of whom are being touted to win medals at the Commonwealth Games 2022.

Tejaswin Shankar is one such young athlete, who is expected to add to India’s medal tally at the Commonwealth Games 2022. The 22-year-old holds the national record in the high jump and has impressed in several domestic and international competitions since 2018. However, he does not enjoy the same recognition as Chopra, but that could change soon in the future. Let’s take a look at who he is and how he became one of India’s best.

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Born on December 21, 1998, in New Delhi in a Tamil family, Shankar completed his schooling at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. He used to play cricket during his school until the eighth grade, however, following Shankar’s physical education teacher’s recommendation, he set his focus on the high jump.

It was after he decided to switch from cricket to high jump that he began winning laurels in inter-school meets. However, tragedy struck soon as his father, Harishankar, died of blood cancer in 2014.

After he finished school, Shankar received an athletics scholarship to Kansas State University in the US for four years. He enrolled at the university, where he pursued a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

In 2015, he won the gold medal at the 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games in Apia. He set a record at the games with a jump of 2.14 metres. He replicated his performance next year in the South Asian Games in Guwahati, where he beat his record with a jump of 2.17 metres. However, he picked up an injury soon, which forced him to finish in the sixth position at the Asian Junior Championships and be absent from the World Junior Championships.

However, he recuperated and returned to the fore and came to the attention of many when he broke a 12-year-old high jump national record of 2.25 metres, with a jump of 2.26 metres at the Junior National Championships in Coimbatore.

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He went on to beat the indoor national record of 2.18 metres in January 2018, before breaking the new record once again in the same month. In the next month, he achieved his personal best of 2.28 metres at the Big 12 Indoor Athletics Championships in Ames.

He was part of the Indian contingent at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. He bettered his record once again with a jump of 2.28 metres at the 22nd Federation Cup Indian Championships in March 2018, which helped him to qualify for the mega event. He set a new national record in April 2018 when he jumped 2.29 metres in Texas, USA.

Currently, he holds four national records, three indoor and one outdoor, something that he will look to break once again soon.