Mayookha Johny, Prajusha: A tale of two jumpers

September 17, 2014 02:52 am | Updated 02:52 am IST

Once hailed as the successor to Anju Bobby George, Mayookha Johny has failed to better her July 2010 high of 6.64m, while Prajusha (right), seen with coach M.A. George, is also nowhere near her personal best of 6.55m. Photo: Vipin Chandran

Once hailed as the successor to Anju Bobby George, Mayookha Johny has failed to better her July 2010 high of 6.64m, while Prajusha (right), seen with coach M.A. George, is also nowhere near her personal best of 6.55m. Photo: Vipin Chandran

A few years ago, she was hailed as the girl who would take over from Anju Bobby George. Mayookha Johny was very young then, talented, had some big jumps to her name and she promised a lot more.

Her career graph during her early years, when she was coached by SAI’s Jose Mathew at Thalassery, was much more impressive than 2003 World Championship bronze medallist Anju’s and there was even talk that she would be the first Indian woman to go past the seven-metre barrier in the long jump.

It appeared to be a clean and steady graph and this excited many athletics buffs who were watching her closely.

She appeared to be on the right path when she won the Asian Championship long jump gold at Kobe, Japan, and took the triple jump bronze with a national record (14.11m) at the same meet. Shyam Kumar had taken over as Mayookha’s coach a few months before that and he promised the world.

Good enough?

But today, the talk is not about how far Mayookha would jump but whether she is good enough to be sent for the Asian Games at Incheon.

Mayookha fared poorly at the trials in Patiala for the borderline cases on Monday, with just a 13.18m effort in triple jump. Fortunately, she has been offered one more chance.

“With this performance, Mayookha and men’s triple jumper Renjith Maheswary (who came up with a dismal 15.91m at the Continental Cup a couple of days ago), cannot go to the Asian Games,” chief national coach Bahadur Singh said on Tuesday evening. “But considering their past performance, we have decided to offer them one more chance, they will have to attend another trial on Sept. 18 and then we will decide.”

The last few months have been rather disappointing ones for the 26-year-old Mayookha. She was the first to qualify for the Commonwealth Games from the Inter-State Nationals in Lucknow with 6.56m (which put her among the top three in Asia this year) in June but at Glasgow, she failed to make to the final after a best effort of 6.11m.

Shocking

She was fourth in the Federation Cup, with a more shocking 6.08m, at Patiala last month. And she has not gone up even a centimetre from her July 2010 high of 6.64m in the last four years. What happened to Mayookha? Where did she go wrong? “I think she had some knee pain at Glasgow,” revealed M.A. Prajusha, the Federation Cup champion. “She is completely demoralised, that’s the only issue. There may be there is a sudden slide but she can come back,” said C.K. Valson, the Athletics Federation of India Secretary. “I can say anytime, she is a better jumper than Prajusha.”

Surprisingly Prajusha, whose confidence appeared to be very low just three months ago, is now slowly getting things together. Four years ago, while all the spotlight was on Mayookha, Prajusha leaped out from the shadows and grabbed the long jump silver at the New Delhi Commonwealth Games.

Prajusha, who has a personal best of 6.55m which came in Bangalore in 2010, failed to qualify for the recent Commonwealth Games but now, though her jumps are nothing to rave about — she won the Fed Cup long jump with 6.23m — she will be safely on the plane to Incheon. “I don’t think this sort of performance will win a medal for me at the Asiad. I need to do something like 6.50m or more to get that,” said Prajusha from Patiala. “Of course, I’m getting better.”

M.A. George, Prajusha’s coach, feels that his trainee would be doing something like 6.40m or more. “She has got a bit of her confidence back.”

Surprisingly, a bit of good news has come from the recent Continental Cup in Morocco and this should offer some hope for our struggling jump queens.

China’s Lu Minjia, the Asian leader in the world list this year with 6.57m, could manage just 6.14m while finishing seventh in Morocco in the women’s long jump while another top star, Chinese triple jumper Yanmei Li could produce just 13.37 for the fifth place in the women’s triple jump.

Is Asia suffering a dip too?

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