Inspired by Jamaican legend Usain Bolt, Animesh Kujur will make Diamond League history when he takes to the track in Monaco on Friday, becoming the first Indian sprinter to do so.
Kujur told AFP of his delight of bumping into Olympic 100 and 200m champions Noah Lyles and Letsile Tebogo at lunch on Thursday, enjoying a selfie with the duo as reality hit that he is now rubbing shoulders with the current sprinting elite.
Kujur will not, however, be racing against the vaunted pair, instead featuring in the under-23 200m on an evening loaded with top stars of track and field.
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The favourite for the Indian’s race is none other than widely touted Australian teen prodigy Gout Gout, often compared to a younger Bolt but also finding his feet among the big boys.
“I saw them in the dining hall,” Kujur said of Lyles and Tebogo. “I used to see them on Instagram only, not in reality. So, when I saw them for the first time in my life, I went and I took a photo with them. They’re very nice. They said, ‘Yeah, bro, come and let’s take a photo’. I felt like, oh wow, that I am on a bigger stage now. I have to act like a pro athlete.”
Kujur has enjoyed a mean streak of form coming into Monaco, setting national records of 10.18 and 20.27sec in the 100 and 200m, respectively.
The 22-year-old, born in a tribal village in Chhattisgarh, a landlocked State in central India, put his improved form down to a two-week camp in Switzerland.
There he worked on body mechanics and his start out of the blocks with his own coach Martin Owens, who is based in the eastern state of Odisha, and Swiss-based bobsleigh performance coach Chris Woolley.
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“Because of that, my time improved so much,” he said, adding that time away from merely domestic competition was also a game changer.
“It’s a very nice thing that I’m competing with athletes who are faster than me. Whenever I compete with faster athletes, my times improve.”
‘Lightning strike’
Owens is head coach of the high performance centre in Odisha set up by the Reliance Foundation in 2010 to provide impetus to various philanthropic initiatives of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, the retail-to-refining giant led by Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani and India’s most valuable company by market capitalisation.
Ambani’s wife Nita, a member of the International Olympic Committee since 2016, heads up the foundation, which helps fund invaluable European circuit experience for the likes of Kujur.
“It’s a massive step up for him,” Englishman Owens told AFP. “In my three years in the job, I see people that just want to be better. They don’t want to be the best in India, they want to be competing on a world stage.”
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Kujur faces a tough jump to make the 20.16sec qualifying mark for the world championships in Tokyo in September, but he was in confident mood.
“What I’m feeling now is I’m going to crack that time,” he said. “I’m feeling like 20.10 I’m going to run. I’ll get more confidence from the bigger competitors I’m up against. They’ll bring me energy. Big athletes means international medallists so I’m feeling happy that I’m going to compete with them.”
Kujur admitted that eight-time Olympic gold medallist Bolt had been his inspiration.
“I used to give his signature lightning strike pose after finishing first in India,” he said with a wry smile.
“On the international stage, I didn’t give until now! Yeah, let’s see what will happen tomorrow!”
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With India mulling a bid for the 2036 Summer Olympics, Owens was in no doubt a sprint revolution is under way in India, much in the same way the javelin took off after Neeraj Chopra was crowned Olympic champion in Tokyo, followed up by world gold in 2023 and an Olympic silver in Paris.
“We’ve got a group of young sprinters that are all around about the same standard and they’re just going to keep pushing each other,” he said, emphasising the importance of the 4x100m relay for further exposure.
“They’ve already broken the national record this year. They’ve just got to believe that the relay is an important entrance into it and then they can get to rub shoulders with Noah Lyles, Karsten Warholm and Shericka Jackson.
“They’ll train harder, smarter, get motivated and driven, and get some belief.”
