Arpinder Singh

Arpinder Singh is an Indian track and field athlete born on 30th December 1992. He hails from Harsha Chinna village of Amritsar district in Punjab. He specializes and represents India internationally in the Triple Jump.

Background

Arpinder Singh was born to Jagbir Singh and Harmeet Kaur. He comes from a humble family, where his father served as Havaldar in the Indian Army and his mother a housewife.

Arpinder’s father, Jagbir, encouraged him to take up the sport and instilled in him the significance of physical fitness at an early age. His father would wake him up at 5 am to make him run at least 5 kilometers every day. At the age of 9, Arpinder began to take part in 100m, 200m, 300m, and Long Jump events at school-level. His talent was spotted by his first coach DS Bal, who implored him to pursue Triple Jump.

Arpinder Singh took Triple Jump seriously and went on to be the School Champion. After learning his son’s desire to represent India at the International level, Jagbir Singh decided to mortgage his 1.5-acre land to moneylenders to invest in Arpinder’s training. Jagbir backed his son’s dream and didn’t let his training be interrupted.

Rise to Glory

After getting a career breakthrough at the school-level competitions, Arpinder won his 1st national medal by winning a Silver at the National School Games. In 2009, he won the first Gold medal of his career at the National Youth Games.

In 2013, Arpinder became National Champion in the triple jump for the first time with a jump of 16.70 meters at the National Athletics Championships in Ranchi, Jharkhand.

In 2014, he won the Gold medal and also shattered Kerala’s Renjith Maheshswary national record by covering a distance of 17.17 meters at the National Inter-State Athletics Championships in Lucknow. With this achievement, he secured his spot at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

At the 2015 National Athletics Championships, he won the Gold medal by jumping 16.36 meters held in Kolkata. In 2017, Arpinder bagged the Gold medal at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games at Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. A year later, he won the Bronze medal by jumping 16.59 meters at the IAAF Continental Cup at Ostrava in the Czech Republic.

In 2019, Arpinder won the Gold medal by jumping 16.83 meters at the Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships. Despite this, he couldn’t qualify for the World Athletics Championships as he fell 0.17 meters short of the qualification mark.

Major Achievements

Arpinder Singh tasted his first international success at the 2013 Asian Athletics Championships when he won the Bronze medal in the triple jump by jumping 16.58 meters held at Pune. In 2014, he bagged the Bronze medal with a distance of 16.63 meters at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. Later in September, he participated in the Incheon Asian Games and finished 5th in the final by jumping 16.41 meters.

In 2017, Arpinder competed in the Asian Athletics Championships but finished 4th by jumping 16.33 meters at Bhubaneshwar in Odisha. At the 2018 Commonwealth Games, he ended his campaign by finishing 4th with a jump of 16.46 meters. In August, he clinched the Gold medal by jumping 16.77 meters at the Jakarta Asian Games and became the 1st Indian triple jumper to be Asian Games Gold-Medalist since 1970.

Arpinder Singh is looking to cement the Olympics berth at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics through the qualification mark of 17.14 meters in the triple jump.