For someone making her fourth consecutive appearance in a big-event final, Anju Bobby George reacted with a strange mixture of relief and elation. Almost as if she didn’t quite believe it — but she will be there tomorrow night, among the world’s 12 best long-jumpers, after ranking 10th. And she did it with her’s best jump of the season so far, 6.54 metres (though she touched 6.70 in the warm-up immediately before the event).After her third jump, Anju walked back to the bench, her head down and a prayer on her lips, to collect her track suit. But her husband and coach Robert, standing in the aisle leading to the coaches’ stand across the jumping pit, afforded a broad smile and a big sigh of relief. The tension was understandable because it was touch and go for Anju. With a swirling wind making conditions difficult for the jumpers, she was feeling for the board all the time. ‘‘I had to stretch out to the board all the time because of the wind’’, she told The Indian Express. ‘‘When I marked my start, the wind was blowing from behind. But when the event started it was a headwind. Every time I had to readjust my mark and feel for the board as I approached it before the leap.’’Another problem, which both Anju and Robert mentioned, was that the jumpers had to wait for the pits to be vacated by the decathletes, cutting down on their warm-up time.That explains why even the top-notchers with better distances this season were struggling. For instance the gold winner in Paris, France’s Eunice Barber, and Russia’s Tatyana Kotova struggled with their first jumps before making it in their second with 6.60 and 6.63, respectively.Other qualifiers included Hungarian Tunde Vaszi, American Grace Upshaw and Russian teenager Oksana Udmurtova in Anju’s group; all of them had to struggle before making the cut.Tomorrow’s jump is at 9-05 p.m. IST.
