Birmingham: India would have won the gold medal in the long jump at the Commonwealth Games 2022 here, but Murali Sreeshankar was twice declared fouls due to the new take-off system. Prior to this, the take-off board was manually monitored with an officer on board and a red or white flag was raised to declare whether a jumper had violated the rule.
World Athletics recently introduced a digital take-off board, in which a laser beam acts as a take-off line. Thus crossing or breaking that laser beam may disqualify the jumper’s attempt. So, Murali Sreeshankar’s two jumps on Thursday were declared wrong by this new system, even as the athletes found themselves surprised by the margin by which they were shown crossing the line.
Sreeshankar said, ‘I was very surprised by the close margin by which I was shown crossing the border. It was too small. As per arrangement, Sreeshankar’s toe was one millimeter across the line and his jump, which would have been within 8.30, was declared illegal.