Competing ‘with faster athletes', Animesh breaks 100m NR in Greece

Time of India

11 hours ago

Despite a successful outing at the National Games in Dehradun early this year, Animesh Kujur wasn't a happy man. That's because he wasn't just aiming for a win there, he was also eyeing records and better timings and had pushed himself day in and day out to make sure he could do that.
Although he didn't succeed then, it's finally happening.
First he broke the 200m national record during the final of the Asian Athletics Championships on May 31 when he ran a time of 20.32 seconds to grab a silver medal. And now on Saturday night at the Dromia International Sprint and Relays Meeting at Konstantinos Baglatzis Municipal Stadium in Vari, Greece, he shattered the 100m national record by crossing the finishing line in 10.18 seconds.
Animesh, who trains at the Odisha Reliance Foundation Athletics High-Performance Centre (HPC) at Kalinga Stadium, bettered Gurindervir Singh's timing of 10.20 seconds set during the Indian Grand Prix 1 at Netaji Subhas Southern Centre of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) in Bengaluru in March.
International competition, like the one where he shone on Saturday, is what he was talking about when he said in an exclusive interview to TOI, "I have to compete with faster athletes.
In India, there aren't many competitors like that. But I have the scope of training abroad and running with athletes who have timings close to 10 seconds, and that way I will be able to gauge where I stand at the moment."
As far as Saturday's race is concerned, he rushed out of the blocks in the blink of an eye and continued to lead. Running in lane 4, he kept improving his pace and, despite some challenge from Sotirios Gkaragkanis of Greece, he crossed the finish line in the first position quite easily — .09 seconds faster than his earlier PB of 10.27 seconds.
Gkaragkanis had to settle for second place (10.23 sec) while Samuli Samuelsson finished third (10.28 sec).
With more events coming up, one expects him to run even faster in his quest to someday breach the 10-second barrier, which James Hiller, athletics director with Reliance Foundation, believes is quite possible.
"I get asked a lot, can an Indian break 10 seconds? And they can," said Hiller, before adding, "It's all about how, and I think positivity will help the mindset of our sprinters genuinely believe that they can be faster, they can be better and they can, they can run under 10 seconds and ultimately that's what we need."
Meanwhile, besides Animesh, Lalu Prasad Bhoi and Mrutyam Jayaram Dondapati — both from Odisha — also took part in the event and competed in another race and clocked 10.42 seconds and 10.47 seconds respectively. In another race, Manikanta Hoblidhar ran it in 10.52 seconds.
Animesh will next compete in the Monaco Diamond League on July 11 where he will run the 200m in the U23 category. He will hope to lower his NR there, too, after his time of 20.27 seconds last month, during the Atleticageneve 2025 event in Switzerland, wasn't recognised as NR because of wind assistance.
While individually, he has been having a hugely successful season, he has also been in brilliant form in the relays and alongwith Amlan Borgohain, Gurindervir and Manikanta, they broke the 15-year-old NR in 4x100m by clocking 38.69 seconds during the National Relay Carnival 2025 in Chandigarh in April.