Four years after Eldhose Paul and Abdulla Aboobacker delivered a memorable gold-silver finish in Birmingham, India’s triple jumpers once again returned with two medals from the Commonwealth Games. Praveen Chithravel and Selva Prabhu Thirumaran finished second and third respectively in Glasgow on Saturday, continuing a run that has quietly turned the event into one of India’s strongest in athletics.
The medals were different this time, but the story wasn’t. Another Commonwealth Games, another Indian double podium in the men’s triple jump.
Jamaica’s Jordan Scott won gold with a best effort of 16.72m, while Praveen jumped 16.58m for silver and Selva followed closely with 16.52m to claim bronze. For India, it was another reminder that the success of 2022 wasn’t a one-off. The pipeline that produced Eldhose and Abdulla is still delivering.
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The final itself demanded patience from both Indians. Neither led after the opening three rounds, but when the competition began slipping away, both found their best jumps at exactly the right time.
Praveen finished second with a best effort of 16.58m, while Selva claimed bronze with 16.52m as both Indians timed their best jumps to perfection in a tense final. Jamaica’s Jordan Scott secured gold with a championship-winning leap of 16.72m, but India’s double podium once again became one of the stories of the evening.
PRAVEEN STEPS UP
Praveen Chithravel’s silver was another milestone in a journey that began in a small village in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur district, where his father worked as a daily wage farm labourer. From winning gold at the inaugural Khelo India School Games in 2018 to becoming India’s first Youth Olympic medallist in the triple jump later that year, the 24-year-old has steadily established himself as the country’s leading name in the event.
Now the national record holder and an Olympian, Praveen once again delivered when the stakes were highest.
After the opening three rounds, he was down in fifth with a best effort of 16.31m and staring at the prospect of missing out on the medals. The response came on his fourth attempt, a superb leap of 16.58m that briefly lifted him into the lead before Scott answered with the winning jump.
Neither athlete improved in the remaining rounds, leaving Praveen with a well-earned silver to add to his Asian Games bronze, Asian Championships silver and FISU World University Games silver.
SELVA’S BIG MOMENT
Selva Prabhu’s bronze marked the biggest medal of a career that has risen rapidly over the last few years.
The Madurai-born jumper, who also comes from a farming family, first caught the athletics world’s attention with silver at the 2022 World U20 Championships before becoming the first Indian to be named the Asian Athletics Association’s Best Under-20 Male Athlete. His move to Kansas State University in the United States has only accelerated that progress, with Selva winning the NCAA Division I outdoor title earlier this year and breaking the 17-metre barrier.
In Glasgow, however, he had to fight for every centimetre.
A foul on his fourth attempt dropped him out of the medal positions after New Zealand’s Ethan Olivier moved ahead. With the pressure mounting, Selva produced the jump that mattered most — a fifth-round effort of 16.52m that reclaimed third place by just two centimetres.
Neither jumper could improve with their final attempts, but they had already ensured another memorable evening for Indian athletics. Four years after Birmingham, India once again left the Commonwealth Games with two triple jump medals, a sign that the country’s success in the event is no longer an exception but a standard it is beginning to uphold.
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