India's Murali Sreeshankar bags gold medal in long jump at MVA High Performance athletics meet

California [US], May 1 : Indian long jumper Murali Sreeshankar won the gold medal at the MVA High Performance 1 2023 athletics meet held in Chula Vista, USA on Sunday.

Murali Sreeshankar's best jump at the California competition measured 8.29m, only 0.07m short of his personal best of 8.36m, which was the men's long jump national record in India until Jeswin Aldrin broke it in March with an 8.42m jump at the second Indian Open Jumps Championships.

The 24-year-old Sreeshankar's gold-winning jump at Chula Vista was over the World Athletics Championships 2023 qualifying standard for men's long jump set at 8.25m.

However, Murali Sreeshankar, a Commonwealth Games 2022 silver medalist, will not be qualified for the world, which will be held in Budapest this August. This is due to tailwinds measuring +3.1m/s during the endeavour. Wind assistance of more than +2.0m/s is not logged as an official record or qualifying timing in the long jump.

The Asian Games 2023 qualifying standard for men's long jump set by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI), meanwhile, is 7.95m.

Sreeshankar started his 2023 season at the Indian Grand Prix 3 in Bengaluru last month, where he won the gold medal with a 7.94m effort. The meet in the US was his second competition of the year and the first piece of competitive action on foreign soil for 2023.

At Chula Vista, China's Ma Weidong won the silver medal with a 7.99m leap. His compatriot Huafeng Huang clinched the bronze with a 7.61m jump.