Shaili Singh, 17, established herself as the latest Indian track and field contender on Sunday evening in Nairobi, capturing silver in the women's long jump at the World Athletics U20 Championships.
Even though she came up a centimetre short of becoming only the third Indian to win a gold medal at the Junior Worlds, she'll be compared to the other two - Neeraj Chopra and Hima Das. Shaili possesses the strut and confidence of a professional athlete, and she demonstrates it on the field. She has the Indian junior record of 6.48m, and while her wind-assisted mark of 6.59m in Nairobi won't go down in history, she's moving tantalisingly near to Anju Bobby George's hitherto unchallenged 17.-year-old record of 6.83m established at the 2004 Athens Olympics with each race.
Anju -- who along with her husband Robert Bobby George coaches Shaili -- told ESPN ahead of Sunday's final, "sooner or later, Shaili will break my record."
Robert is even more bullish. "She will touch and go past 6.83 in another 2-3 years. But she will cross the 7m mark in three years. This I can guarantee," he said following her medal ceremony.
Shaili was born in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, to Vinita, a single mother who struggled to make ends meet as a tailor. She made up for her lack of financial resources by having complete faith in and support for her daughter's ability.
When she was 13, her mother pushed her to take up her interest in sports seriously. "I used to run around a lot in my school. That time, I didn't even have money for shoes so I ran barefoot. My mother read in the newspaper that a selection trial was being held and told me to participate if I was keen," Shaili said on Sunday. "I first appeared for a trial in Jhansi and then at the KD Singh Babu Stadium in Lucknow. I was selected to be part of the Lucknow sports hostel," she said.
She wasn't a standout performer in Lucknow. She didn't even make the podium in her debut national tournament, the U-14 long jump competition at the Junior Nationals in Vijaywada in 2017, when she finished fifth with a best jump of 4.64m. The focus was on the girls on the podium, and Shaili, like so many other young athletes who lacked that early spark, may have slipped through the cracks. Except that something about her had piqued Robert Bobby George's interest.
