Athletics | ‘Need to compete with faster athletes’ - Animesh Kujur

Despite a successful outing at the National Games in Dehradun early this year, Animesh Kujur wasn’t a happy man. That’s because he wasn’t just aiming for a win there, he was also eyeing records and better timings and had pushed himself day in and day out to make sure he could do that. Although he didn’t succeed then, it’s finally happening.First he broke the 200m national record during the final of the Asian Athletics Championships on May 31 when he ran a time of 20.32 seconds to grab a silver medal.On Saturday night at the Dromia International Sprint and Relays Meeting at Konstantinos Baglatzis Municipal Stadium in Vari, Greece, he shattered the 100m national record by crossing the finish line in 10.18 seconds.Animesh, who trains at the Odisha Reliance Foundation Athletics High-Performance Centre (HPC) at Kalinga Stadium, bettered Gurindervir Singh’s timing of 10.20 seconds set during the Indian Grand Prix 1 at Netaji Subhas Southern Centre of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) in Bengaluru in March.He told TOI in an exclusive interview, “I have to compete with faster athletes. In India, there aren’t many competitors like that. But I have the scope of training abroad and running with athletes who have timings close to 10 seconds. That is how I will be able to measure where I stand.”With more events coming up, one expects him to run even faster in his quest to breach the 10-second barrier, which James Hiller, athletics director with Reliance Foundation, believes is quite possible. “I get asked a lot, can an Indian break 10 seconds? And they can,” said Hiller. “I think positive mindset will help the sprinters genuinely believe that they can be faster and they can run under 10 seconds.”