Tejaswin Shankar finished first in the long jump, shot put, and 110m hurdles while placing second in the 400m and high jump.
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In the decathlon at the Arizona Athletics meet, Tejaswin Shankar successfully met the qualifications for the Asian Games 2023. At the Jim Click Shootout and Multis 2023 athletics meet in Arizona, USA, on Saturday, Tejaswin Shankar who currently holds the men’s high jump national record for India—set a new personal best of 7,648 points to place second in the decathlon competition. The Indian athlete was taking part in just his second decathlon competition after making his combined-event debut at the Big 12 Conference in Texas in May of last year. Tejaswin Shankar recorded an impressive score of 7,592 there, which is the highest in the history of the Indian decathlon and dates back almost 11 years.
Tejaswin Shankar, who won the high jump bronze medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, increased his personal best at the Jim Click Shootout to 7,648. He is now only 10 points short of Bharatinder Singh’s 2011 national record for the Indian decathlon. The 24-year-old Tejaswin Shankar also surpassed the decathlon qualifying standard for the Asian Games 2023, set at 7,500 points by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI), with this mark.
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The decathlon combines ten different sports: the 100-meter sprint, the long jump, the high jump, the shot put, the discus throw, the 110-meter hurdles, the javelin throw, the pole vault, the 400-meter race, and the 1500-meter race. After all the events, athletes are ranked based on their cumulative point total, which is determined by how well they performed in each category.
Tejaswin Shankar finished first in the long jump, shot put, and 110m hurdles while placing second in the 400m and high jump. The pole vault competition was where he performed the worst, coming in eighth. With 7,845 points, Till Steinforth of the University of Nebraska took first place in the decathlon at the Jim Click Shootout. With 7,440 points, Emil Uhlin finished third.
Tejaswin Shankar made headlines before the Commonwealth Games 2022 due to his exclusion from the Indian delegation for Birmingham meet despite meeting the entry requirements. The high jumper went to the UK and returned with a bronze medal following intervention by the Indian courts. The high jumper’s desire to switch to the decathlon had been expressed after his success in Birmingham, and the meet in Arizona marked his first decathlon competition since that time. At the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold event held in Boston in February of this year, Tejaswin Shankar won the men’s high jump gold medal.
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