India’s disappointing outing in Athletics at the Rio Olympics 2016 continued with Renjith Maheshwary failing to make the cut in the men’s triple jump. In his third Olympic games, Maheshwary made three successful jumps without a single foul but was nowhere close to the qualification mark to go into the final.
The qualification criteria for the triple jump required athletes to jump 16.95m to qualify automatically. If not, the 12 best jumpers moved into the final. Unfortunately, the Kerala-based jumper’s best attempt was only 16.13m (with a tail wind of 0.5m/s).
In his first attempt, he jumped only 15.80m. It was a decent effort considering the majorit of the field were still warming up and setting similar marks. His second attempt saw him improve to 16.13m to give Indians a glimmer of hope but he was still not in the top 12.
His personal best of 17.30m this season – a national record he set in Bengaluru at the 3rd Indian Grand Prix only last month – was the third best mark this year behind American jumpers Christian Taylor (17.78m) and Will Claye (17.65m).
Maheshwary needed a massive jump in his third and final attempt. Unfortunately, he only managed to jump 15.99m to finish outside the Top 12. In fact, it only saw him finish 30th.
Not many jumpers managed to clear the 16.95m qualification mark and it was the 12 best athletes who eventually qualified for the final. In all, only five jumpers managed to clear the mark – USA’s Christian Taylor and Will Claye, China’s Bin Dong and Shuo Cao and Portugal’s Nelson Evora. The Chinese jumpers managed to qualify with their very first jump as did Taylor and neither of the three jumped again.
2012 bronze medallist Fabrizio Donato of Italy also failed to qualify with a best of 16.54m – finishing 17th. Taylor and Claye had won gold and silver in London four years ago and they now have a chance to win yet another Olympic medal in the triple jump on Tuesday, 16 August, at 6:20 PM IST.
| # | Country | Athlete | Distance (m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USA | Christian Taylor | 17.24 |
| 2 | China | Bin Dong | 17.10 |
| 3 | USA | Will Claye | 17.05 |
| 4 | Portugal | Nelson Evora | 16.99 |
| 5 | China | Shuo Cao | 16.97 |
| 6 | Guyana | Troy Doris | 16.81 |
| 7 | Poland | Karol Hoffmann | 16.79 |
| 8 | Colombia | John Murillo | 16.78 |
| 9 | France | Benjamin Compaore | 16.72 |
| 10 | Mexico | Alberto Alvarez | 16.67 |
| 11 | China | Xiaolong Xu | 16.65 |
| 12 | Cuba | Lazaro Martinez | 16.61 |
Note: Triple jumpers in bold automatically qualified with a mark that was more than 16.95m
