Fighting destiny: At 33, destiny defeats Karthik Unnikrishnan at the Asian Games

Rain made the runway at the Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium difficult to negotiate. It gradually declined as Karthik Unnikrishnan prepared for the biggest competition of his life, at an age when most triple jumpers were thinking of the end of their career rather than the beginning of an international one.

Karthik was 33 years old and made his debut at the Asian Games. He had been waiting for this opportunity for years. He also spent years wondering if it would ever come.

More bad news awaited him on the runway. India’s 2022 Asian Games bronze medalist Praveen Chithravel pulled a muscle in the opening round and was ruled out without completing the jump. The onus of carrying out India’s challenge in the event was suddenly on Karthik, who had already arrived in Nagoya knowing that these could be the only major continental games of his career.

It was hardly the debut he had imagined. But very little of Karthik’s career went according to plan.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS IN KERALA

Born in 1993, Karthik has been on the Indian triple jump scene since 2015. He is not a late starter in athletics; what slowed him down was everything about sports. His parents ran a tea shop in Ooty, while Karthik grew up in his maternal grandparents’ house in Kerala. He wasn’t particularly good at studies, and when his family saw a six-foot-tall boy in need of guidance, sports became the obvious choice.

Karthik Unnikrishnan soars to the top at the Indian Open Athletics!

Karthik registers his best time of 16.11m to win the men’s triple jump at the Indian Open in Sangrur!

He was also the only athlete who broke the 16 meter barrier today among the 24 jumpers!#IndianAthletics pic.twitter.com/WulLtdkWnT— nnis Sports|Asian GamesAthletics (@nnis_sports) July 28, 2025

At Parali High School in Palakkad, he was initially put into the hurdles where he struggled. For a child who lives far from his parents and finds success neither in studies nor in sports, failure quickly grew into self-doubt. he cried He felt lonely. When he was eventually moved to the triple jump, success came in small bursts before stalling again at the state level.

So he scaled back that dream. He stopped measuring himself against national standards and focused on the one thing he thought was within reach: he just wanted to wear the Kerala state jersey.

ACCIDENTAL BREAKTHROUGH

Karthik’s trajectory shifted when he was called up as an injury replacement for the nationals and unexpectedly finished second. This medal caught the attention of coach PG Manoj, who gave him some practical advice: secure a job first and then figure out the rest.

That security got through the sports quota in the Indian Air Force. It was a huge moment for the family, who at first thought cheerfully that getting a job in the Air Force meant he would be flying planes.

Instead, the Air Force gave Karthik something he had never known: an environment where a home medal was just a starting point. Surrounded by jumpers who looked far beyond national borders, his inner goal kept moving from 15 meters to 16 and then to 17. The Asian Games and the Olympics were no longer distant abstractions.

CARRYING LUGGAGE

The problem with allowing yourself to dream more is that failure stops being a vague feeling and begins to take on very concrete forms.

Over the next few years, circumstances kept pulling out the rug. The COVID-19 lockdown has trapped him in Patiala, far from his support system. His recovery from COVID and the absence of his coach cost him the Tokyo Olympic Trials. An ankle injury during the Commonwealth Games trials sidelined him just after he joined the elite Indian club to break the 17m barrier. In 2023, a serious tendon injury disrupted his muscle coordination so much that he and his physical therapist, Garima, now his wife, had to strip his technique and teach him to jump again.

In isolation, every failure had a logical explanation: a bad infection, a torn tendon, bad timing. But stacked together they became psychological weight. Every big test was no longer just a fresh runway; she was full of memories of the last missed flight.

By the time he rebuilt his body to the point where he believed he had it in him to jump 16.80 meters, he was 33 years old and carrying a decade of near misses into Nagoya.

WHEN FATE REFUSES TO LOSE

It was still raining when Karthik entered the runway for six tries. He crossed the 16-meter mark only once, finishing sixth overall.

For most of his life, Karthik was locked in a personal, silent war with fate, an invisible adversary that kept moving the wickets every time he came close. We like to think of fate as an abstract, great force, but in reality it is ordinary and inexorable. It manifests itself in an unprecedented downpour, a torn tendon in the worst possible week, an illness that drains your legs right before an exam. It affects every common man, but for a sportsperson like Karthik, these subtle shifts in fate happen under the stadium lights.

Destiny may have claimed the last round in Nagoya and it ended up being probably his last appearance on a podium like this. But Karthik just takes it in stride, dons that familiar smile and leaves. Ultimately, his story is not just about an athlete in the rain; it’s about the daily battles the rest of us fight against bad timing, missed chances, and misplaced goals.

We don’t always get to choose how fate plays out, but we do get to choose how we walk away from the board, unencumbered by our destination and satisfied that we had the courage to show up.

– The end