Commonwealth Games: Tejaswin Shankar pulled himself to stay in the present to win the bronze medal-Sports News , Firstpost

Tejaswin Shankar celebrates with a bronze medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. AP

Birmingham: They say the art of keeping the mind in the present, rather than let it flit either back or forward in time, is very difficult to master. Jumping as the mind does from one thought to another, restlessly, without being still for even a moment, there is no wonder that some call it the monkey mind.

On Wednesday evening in faraway Birmingham, Tejaswin Shankar channeled his mind to bring home a historic men’s High Jump medal from the Commonwealth Games. It is India’s maiden medal in the event, improving on Bhim Singh’s fourth place finish back in 1970. It is also India’s first track and field medal in the current Commonwealth Games.

Commonwealth Games: India schedule, Results, Medals tally

It would have been natural for his mind to be reduced – or elevated — to a tapestry of thoughts, freezeframes from the month and a half or an impending place on the podium. And nobody would have blamed him if he had been overwhelmed by recent events, from attaining the qualifying standard of 2.27m in June to getting the Delhi High Court to ensure his selection.

Before he stepped up to compete, he had to tell himself to put the roller-coaster developments of the past behind. “Once I reached Birmingham, I had just one thing on my mind – to do the best I could and win a medal for India. There was no time for anything else,” he says. “Someone trusted me, and I had been given an opportunity. I wanted to make the most of it.”

He offered no signs of rancour when he met the media, virtually in India, and in person in Birmingham through Thursday. This was the greatest reflection of how he had moved on from the past and had just about allowed the enormity of his feat to sink in: not only is his medal the first in High Jump, but also is only India’s 29th in Commonwealth Games athletics.

While some may be looking for that beating-all-odds narrative, Tejaswin Shankar himself was leaving that behind in favour of the mindfulness approach paying him dividends. Many years later, when he replay videos of his jumps in Birmingham and the medal ceremony, he will recall how he had consciously tethered his mind to singular, non-distracted focus.

Indeed, he pinned his mind to the task on hand and kept it there until the goal was achieved. And, by all accounts, he faced the challenge of controlling his own mind admirably. On a day when the highest anyone crossed was 2.25m – at least four men had jumped higher this season – it became important to keep the slate clean as he kept clearing the bar.

“I usually tend to get ahead of myself in such circumstances and imagine myself on the podium before taking my first jump. I was imagining only my next jump and not the podium. I was telling myself ‘One more jump and we will be there’. I pulled myself back a lot of times to stay in the present,” he says.

The 24-year-old showed an acute awareness of the conditions obtained at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham and backed that up with a simple, common-sense approach. He figured that it would get chillier as the evening progressed and focused on getting past the first few heights without blemish.

He was clearly putting one of his earliest learnings from sport – to overcome adversity, adapt and adjust – to good use. He reminded himself that the best athletes do not always get more than a couple of days to adapt to new conditions and set down to making the most of the four days that he had on hand by sticking to his familiar pre-meet routines.

Tejaswin Shankar observed the weather over three evenings. “It begins to cool down between 7-00 and 8-00 p.m. I had to make sure that I did not have any miss when clearing the low bars. I didn’t want one of those to come back and bite me later in the competition,” he says. “That’s where I got the edge over an experienced campaigner like Donald Thomas.”

He sensed that, with the track races coming as a disruption, everyone would be stiffening up a bit as the evening progressed and the cold enveloped the stadium. As his luck would have it, both Donald Thomas (Bahamas) and Joel Clarke-Khan (England) missed clearing 2.25m. The Indian missed, too, but his faultless clearances till 2.22 helped him get bronze on countback.

Tejaswin Shankar was also quite smart to start at 2.10 rather than 2.15 that a couple of other competitors preferred. “It allowed me to be nice and warm before the bar was raised to 2.15,” he says. Besides, he made a conscious effort to be ‘less agitated’ than others when the High Jump competition had to stop to allow a track event to go ahead.

He acknowledged the support of his team-mates and officials from the stands. “I had been made to feel welcome and I was able to have just one thought in my mind, to win a medal for India. Everyone was cheering for me and that made me go over those high bars and get that medal for the country,” he says. “And that feeling is second to none.”

It is a good bet that somewhere across the world, a friend of his, answering to the name of Neeraj Chopra, would have broken into a smile when Tejaswin Shankar picked up the bronze medal. For, when young athletes want to hear of examples of an Indian sportsperson holding up under pressure, Tejaswin Shankar would be a prominent tale.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.