Long jumper Shaili ready to take off again
After an injury-ravaged season that saw her miss the Paris qualification, she is happy with her pre-season training
New Delhi: Soon after checking into the Anju Bobby High-Performance Centre in Bengaluru last June, Shaili Singh shut out the world, cranked up Punjabi beats in her room, sobbed, and danced. It was the 21-year-old’s way of letting go of pent-up frustration and dealing with the mental demons that had swamped her otherwise vivacious spirit.

Sure, she told herself to look at the bigger picture -- that it was an injury-ravaged season, that she was still young, that breaking the 20-year-old national record of her mentor Anju (6.83m) was always going to be a tall order -- but the mind never stopped ticking.
“It was a bad phase. I felt I had let myself and my family down,” she remembers. The gnawing sense of worthlessness also meant Shaili didn’t go home during the Olympics, because she felt her mother didn’t deserve to see her “broken and wailing.”
She watched the Olympics in solitude, often wondering what could have been had her body held up in the crucial months leading up to the Games in Paris. The epic men’s javelin final provided some succour, but Shaili repeatedly found herself being sucked into a spiral of pessimism.
“I cheered for our athletes, some of who I am friends with and some of who I look up to. But at the end of the day, it was me dealing with my failure all by myself. It wasn’t easy.”
Billed as one for the future since her under-20 Worlds medal four years back, Shaili is yet to get success at marquee international events. She failed to make the cut at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, finished fifth at the Hangzhou Asian Games, and missed the berth for the Paris Games.
“I never really had a proper build-up for the Olympics. The injuries just kept coming which completely derailed my training plans,” she says.
It started with a bout of Covid in March 2023 that put her out of action for a month. Even when she recovered, the lingering fatigue was tough to shake off. Then, she injured her shoulder at the Asian Games which messed up her off-season.
“Off-season build-up is very critical for an athlete, but going into the Olympic year, I could never load up properly. I barely lifted weights, my strength went down, and it all showed in my performance.”
There was also a recurring niggle on her left ankle to deal with. Her take-off ankle has been troubling her for two years now and Shaili has recently taken Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) therapy.
“It’s kind of a sprain that keeps coming back. It’s not bad enough to necessitate surgery but certainly enough to affect my take-off,” said Shaili. She has been managing it through pain-killers and tapings.
Her coach Robert Bobby George had tweaked her run-up last season but the results didn’t really arrive. “That’s because I couldn’t commit myself to jumps, thanks to my injury. Take-off is my weakest component of the jump, and barring one or two efforts throughout the year, I never really took off,” she says.
As the qualification deadline loomed, Shaili went on a month-long six-competition circuit in Europe but could only muster a best of 6.43m. The Paris marker lay at 6.86m.
It didn’t help that she injured her hip flexor on the tour to go with her ankle issue. Shaili ended her season with a second-place finish at the Inter-State Championships with a season’s best effort of 6.59m and took a two-month break. A 20-day visit to her home in Jhansi and a trip to the hills with her family just before the off-season training helped unclutter her mind.
Shaili is now into the second month of her pre-season and is already lifting close to her personal best. She deadlifts 140kgs and squats 100kgs, and with Robert looking to progressively increase the training load, she is confident to return fitter and stronger.
“My body feels amazing. My rep range has gone up, I have already hit my PB in the gym and by the time the season begins, I’d have gone past it. I am confident the work put in the gym will pay off in the field.”
Shaili will hit the long jump pit next month and plans are afoot to start the season in March-April. With Asian Championships and World Championships lined up in the second half of the year, she has her priorities set. “It’ll be a gradual start. I don’t want to peak too early. World Championships will be the biggest event for me this year and I’ll plan my peak for that. Most importantly, I am feeling positive again.”
