I’m always trying to outrun myself: Wknd interviews star sprinter, Animesh Kujur

He is India's best hope ever in the men’s 100m and 200m sprints. The switch from schoolboy to elite runner was unexpected, ‘but I’m enjoying it now,’ Kujur says

“Personal best, personal best, personal best… I’m constantly trying to outrun myself,” says Animesh Kujur, grinning.

He’s certainly outrun everyone else in India.

Over the past four months alone, the 22-year-old sprinter has reset the national 200m record twice, and reset the national 100m record too. He won bronze at the Asian Athletics Championships in South Korea. Caused considerable excitement in July, when he became the first Indian sprinter to compete in the Diamond League, and came in fourth.

If he qualifies for the World Athletics Championships, to be held in Tokyo in September, he will be the first Indian to compete in the men’s 100m and 200m sprints at this level (the only other Indian is Dutee Chand, who ran the women’s 100m in 2017).

As he works his way up the world rankings, Kujur is India’s best hope ever, in the men’s 100m and 200m sprints, areas in which we have traditionally had no presence.

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“What’s interesting about him is that he’s a sponge,” says Martin Owens, head coach at the Odisha Reliance Foundation High-Performance Centre (HPC). “He’s like a student at the world meets, interacting with top-tier athletes and absorbing their habits and ways.”

Born in Jashpur, Chhattisgarh, Kujur’s family moved around a fair bit, since both parents were police officers. Incidentally, both were also former athletes. His mother Reena Kujur, played basketball at the inter-collegiate level, while his father, Amrit Kujur, played football for the state police team. Their boys, Animesh and Aniket, started out playing football too.

“Particularly when we were posted in the Naxal conflict area of Bastar, my parents were concerned about the impact on us. My father played football with us to keep us motivated, occupied and disciplined. I was always very fast, so that helped,” Kujur says.

Because he was so fast, a few friends suggested he participate in the sprinting trials at a state sports meet held in 2020. “To my surprise, I was selected for the national levels in the junior category. That gave me a real rush,” he says.

Rather than enrol in college, Kujur, then 17, began to train with a local coach and compete at track events. Two years later, at the National Open U-23 Championships in Bilaspur, Owens spotted him. “He looked absolutely effortless running, and had reasonable speed for someone with no real professional training. It looked like there was real potential there,” Owens says.

In 2023, aged 20, Kujur moved to the Odisha HPC, and began to win. “Training under coach Owens has shown me what I’m really capable of, and what I could be if I tried. My peers here, the physical trainers… we’re all a sort of family, looking out for each other,” he says.

Adjusting to life as an elite athlete wasn’t easy, he adds. “There’s a lot of pain before the body adjusts to the workouts and strains. But I’ve had it better than friends who have to study and prepare for the UPSC… If not a sprinter, I would have aimed for the defence academy, and that would have been gruelling too.”

Today, he enjoys the drill, he says. His day starts at 5 am with rigorous workouts, followed by sessions of physiotherapy, cryotherapy or an ice bath at the HPC sports science centre, and daily high-altitude training. His diet is carefully calibrated. The cheat days of fast-food fried chicken and street Chinese food are precious, he says.

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For all the training and effort, in that first year, Kujur couldn’t get his speeds up to the targets he and his coach had set. The goal then was to run the 200m in under 20.60 seconds (the national record at the time, the one Kujur broke this year, was 20.52).

The more he fought the clock, though, the more his body seemed almost to resist. Then, this year, something in him shifted. Instead of chasing medals and records, he began to focus on beating his personal best, at every practice, trial and championship.

The only question he allowed himself to ask was: What’s the best that I can really be?

This silenced the internal clamour, and calmed him.

A spell of heat stroke in April turned out to be a necessary learning experience too, he adds.

Kujur was at an athletics meet in Chennai when the heat and humidity struck. Weakened, he was advised to hydrate and rest before each of his runs. He eventually made it down the track, but then collapsed and needed bed rest for a few days. “The experience taught me how to take care of myself better,” Kujur says.

By the time he arrived at the National Federation Senior Athletics Championships in Kochi, where he would break the 200m record for the first time, he was ready. “Apart from hydrating effectively, I was pressing ice packs into my palms and on my forehead and legs. These are the pressure points that heat up quickly. I kept up this regimen across Europe this summer too,” he says.

The Kochi win put him on track for South Korea, then Greece (where he broke the national 100m record) and the Diamond League in Monaco, where he competed in the U-23 category. There, he trained and ran alongside some of his icons: Gout Gout from Australia, Noah Lyles from the US, Letsile Tebogo from Botswana.

“Watching them do what they do was thrilling,” Kujur says. “What really stood out was how professionally they conduct themselves even off the track. They are approachable and yet focused, and they don’t get swept up by the attention.”

Running alongside his icons in Monaco really hyped Animesh up, Owens says. “He thrives under pressure.”

But, like all athletes, he has flaws that are holding him back. “His mobility was a major factor when he first arrived. He couldn’t squat without falling over. He also wasn’t good at running bends, which are crucial in the 200m because it involves a transition from a bend back to a straight track.”

The aim, as they continue to work together, is to get Kujur to run faster but also more efficiently, conserve energy, build endurance and range.

How does Kujur cope with the losses, in a sport where these are measured in mere milliseconds? “I turn to coach Owens,” he says. “He reminds me that I’m just getting started.”

There are other things that keep him going, he adds. Calls from home and rare visits to family and friends, and the pride he sees in their faces. Sessions of PUBG Mobile, which he plays with friends to blow off steam.

Caring for his plants. “I water them first thing when I wake up. They give me a lot of joy.”

And the joy of running itself.

“When I’m warming up or sitting on the block, before the starting shot is fired, my mind races with the thought: ‘Personal best. Personal best. Personal best.’ But once we’re off, I’m on autopilot. I can feel the adrenaline, but other than that my mind is blank. I savour that.”

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THE LONG DASH

Animesh Kujur is rewriting India’s sprinting records.

* April 2022: Amlan Borgohain completes the 200m sprint in 20.52 seconds, breaking a national record of 20.63 seconds, set in 2018.

* April 2025: Kujur breaks Borgohain’s record, completing the run in 20.40 seconds.

* May 2025: Kujur breaks his own record, at the Asian Athletics Championships in South Korea, with a time of 20.32 seconds. (He also takes home bronze.)

* July 5, 2025: At the Dromia international meet in Greece, Kujur breaks Gurindervir Singh’s 10.20-second national record, completing the 100m run in 10.18 seconds.

* July 11, 2025: He becomes the first Indian sprinter to compete in the Diamond League, and comes in fourth.