A jump that started with courage: Childish challenge, swollen toe and 8.07m jump that made TC Yohannan an Asian Games legend

More than five decades have passed, but Thaduthuvila Chandapillai Yohannan, a genial octogenarian, recounts that day in Tehran with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old.There are the Asian Games in 1974, and the then 28-year-old long jumper’s left big toe swelled. She goes to the runway and takes pain pills.Yohannan’s first attempt lands at 7.25m. The pain shoots up and he takes more painkillers. The second hits 7.8 m and the third is a foul.On the fourth try, something clicks. He lands at a height of 8.07m, a jump that would remain an Asian record for three decades.“When I stood on the stage with the national anthem playing in the background, I knew I had achieved something significant,” he told TOI. Yohannan couldn’t sleep that night, partly because of the swelling in his leg. The national anthem was still playing in his mind.With the Asian Games starting in Japan today, Yohannan’s gold medal takes on significance. Kerala will be represented by 28 athletes who continue the state’s rich sporting tradition.Long before he rewrote the record books in Tehran, there was a stream in Maranadu, a village in Kollam and a dare that almost cost his friend a glass of lemonade.“I was eight or nine and we used to walk 3 km to school. My friend Georgekutty made me jump across the stream. I jumped and fell into it and he ran away. I went home and told my father T Chandapillai what happened,” recalled Yohannan. The father took his son to the stream and asked him to jump. “I cleared it this time. My father rewarded me with a glass of buttermilk. Unknowingly, that was the beginning of my athletic career. My father was my inspiration,” he said with a laugh. At school, Yohannan participated in every event, whether it was sprints, long jump or high jump.Yohannan, the youngest of six brothers, his athletic path was through a steel factory in Bhilai where one of his older brothers worked. He joined the NCC and started showing up at plant meetings. “I once ran 100m in 10.6 seconds,” he said. An officer of the sports division at the factory, impressed, directed him to the long jump pit.Yohannan was only 5’9″, short by long jump standards. He made up for it with speed off the track, a strong core and a leg extension that stretched every inch at takeoff. “You have to be fast and have strong abs. I trained six hours a day,” he said.After obtaining a diploma in mechanical engineering in 1970, he joined TELCO (now Tata Motors), where sports officer Suresh Gujarati used innovative methods such as setting up high hurdles at the end of the runway to help Yohannan gain extra height in flight.He jumped using a hand-arm technique, swinging his arms through the air to combat the forward spin that takeoff creates, buying just enough balance for his body to stretch on landing. Today’s jumpers mostly prefer a trailing style, legs flying through the air like a person running on nothing. “The sport has moved on. I was a product of an earlier generation,” he said.At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, he failed to touch the qualifying mark of 7.8m and finished 16th, with a leg ailment flaring up at the worst possible time. “If I had kept my time in Tehran, I would have won bronze in Montreal,” he said.In 1978, while training at Patiala’s National Institute of Sports, he jumped into a pit that was supposed to be filled with sand and sawdust. But the rain made it soggy. “As I jumped, the ground beneath me caved in. My neck was broken,” he recalled.He was admitted to a local hospital in the evening. The Tatas stepped in and shifted him to Delhi’s Gangaram Hospital. “A team of doctors worked on me. I spent over six months on crutches. They said I would never be able to run or do long jumps again. I was only 32. I felt that I had more to do as an athlete,” he regretted.TELCO moved him to the sales department where he built a second career before moving permanently to Kochi in 1983 with his family.Looking back, Yohannan never expected his record to last 30 years. “Murali Sreeshankar has the height and gift to touch 8.5m if the conditions are right. Ancy Sojan, who broke Anju Bobby George’s 22-year-old national record, can clear 7m. There are medal prospects in Japan,” he said.Asked why Tinu didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps, the former cricketer quipped, “Tinu was not willing to work hard and that’s why he became a fast bowler.” Seventy years after he fell into the creek, climbed out and set the record, Yohannan still hasn’t lost his zest for life.