The 20 years old from Dewas in Madhya Pradesh made good progress this year and improved his personal best to 5.40m.
Navneet Singh
Dev Kumar Meena, son of a small-time farmer from the agricultural belt of Dewas in Madhya Pradesh often supported his parents doing odd jobs at the farm during his school days.
“Working at the farm was sort of cross-training for me during my formative years of athletics journey,” reveals Meena. “Good physical fitness enabled me to dominate the pole vault event.”
In 2020-2021 when the teenager joined the athletics academy in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, he made good progress at the jumping arena. While others jumpers were struggling, he often scaled 5m in training.
On Friday at the World University Games in Germany, the 20 years old Meena made good progress at the pole vault arena. He scaled 5.40m in qualification round, which was better than his own national record of 5.35m he set in April in Kochi. The Indian national record holder missed the podium as he finished fifth in the final.
“Pole vault is a highly technical event. It takes a lot of hard work and patience to add centimetres to raise the bar,” says former national coach PC Tyagi.
The World University Games was Meena’s second international event of this season. His first was in June at Busan international pole vault meeting where he finished eighth with a height of 5.20m.
While in the four domestic competitions he competed, he was outright winner. In February at the National Games in Dehradun he scaled 5.32m to win gold. “It added to his confidence,” says Sanjay Garnaik, former SAI athletics coach.
In 2024 Meena won bronze at the Asian U20 championships 5.10m in Dubai.
Garnaik was head coach at Bhopal’s athletics academy when Meena was adding inches to his performance graph. Incidentally, Garnaik was in Germany to guide Meena during his competition. To stay focused in practice, Garnaik had limited the use of smart phones for all athletes at the Bhopal Academy. “Use of smart phones off the field is the biggest distraction for young athletes. That’s why we didn’t allow youngsters to get busy on social media platforms after practice,” was the logic Garnaik says to ban smartphones.
Meena used an ordinary hand-set to keep in touch with his parents.
Initially Meena was a causal sprinter in school. But later he switched to pole vault when he joined the athletics academy in Bhopal. “During practice it was observed he (Meena) has potential for jumps. On trial basis he was given pole vault,” Garnaik reveals. “Within six months he cleared 4.60m. It was good progress.”
“Without the support of the academy I wouldn’t have reached this far as the equipment is very costly and beyond the reach of an ordinary farmer like us,” Meena says.
