World Athletics Championships 2023: Praveen Chithravel sets new triple jump national record

Havana [Cuba], May 8 : Indian athlete Praveen Chithravel clinched the men's triple jump event at an athletics meet in Havana, Cuba on Saturday. He accomplished this with a national record-breaking mark of 17.37m.

He broke the men's triple jump national record of 17.30m registered by Renjith Maheswary at the third Indian Grand Prix in Bangalore in 2016.

Praveen in his fifth jump achieved this record-breaking mark at the Prueba de Confrontacion 2023 with a headwind reading of -1.5m/s. The permissible wind assistance for official records is +2.0m/s as per Olympics.com.

With this win, the 21-year-old Tamil Nadu also qualifies for the World Athletics Championships 2023, to be held in Budapest from August 19 to 27. The qualifying standard for the event is set at 17.20 m.

Praveen had crossed the Asian Games 2023 qualifying standard of 16.60 m set by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) in his second jump with a 17.17m leap at the second Indian Open Jumps Competition in Bellary.

Praveen's personal best jump previously was 17.18m, which he achieved in Chennai last year.

In the Commonwealth Games 2022, he missed out on a medal with a narrow margin but his 2023 season has started well for him.

Praveen won a silver medal by setting a new national indoor record at the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships 2023 in Astana in February. He clinched the silver with an attempt of 16.98 m.

He followed it by winning a gold medal at the second Indian Open Jumps Competition 2023 in March.

Besides him at the same meet, Thirumaran Selva Prabhu came fourth after setting a new Indian junior (U20) record of 16.58m.

The 2018 Asian Games triple jump champion Arpinder Singh finished sixth in the 10-man field with a best leap of 15.03m.