Murali Sreeshankar wins gold in long jump at Meeting Maia Cidade do Desporto 2025

MAINA: India’s Murali Sreeshankar made a triumphant return to international competition by winning the men’s long jump at the Meeting Maia Cidade do Desporto 2025 in Maia, Portugal, on Saturday.

Competing abroad for the first time since 2023, the 26-year-old Indian athlete registered a best effort of 7.75m on his second attempt to top the field, as per Olympics.com.

The Meeting Maia Cidade do Desporto is a World Athletics Continental Tour bronze-level meet (category C) in Portugal.

Poland’s Piotr Tarkowski also logged 7.75m on his fifth attempt, but Sreeshankar claimed the top spot thanks to a superior second-best mark – 7.69m from his third jump – compared to Tarkowski’s 7.58m.

As per World Athletics rules, if two or more athletes achieve the same best mark in the long jump competition, the jumper with the better second-best performance is ranked higher.

Australia’s Chris Mitrevski rounded out the top three with a best jump of 7.68m on his last attempt.

The Portugal meet was Sreeshankar’s second competition since returning from a serious knee injury sustained in April 2024, which required surgery and forced him to miss the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Earlier this month, Sreeshankar made a winning comeback on home soil with an 8.05m jump at the Indian Open Athletics Meet 2025 in Pune.

Murali had secured a quota for the Paris Olympics by leaping 8.37m – breaching the Olympic entry standard of 8.27m – to win silver at the Asian Athletics Championships 2023 in Bangkok.

His last major international appearance before injury was a silver-medal finish at the Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China. (ANI)