How Sarvesh Kushare’s feats have triggered high jump revolution in his village

Kushare’s journey from Devargaon village in Nashik, where he started with makeshift landing pits made of corn husks and sacks, to the world stage is a story in itself.

Speaking to The Indian Express from Devargaon, Kushare’s father, Anil, said his WhatsApp has been flooded with videos of his son’s jump. “Everybody in the village is putting his jump videos as their WhatsApp status. When he started high jump, I thought he would just improve our family’s fortune. But he has affected the entire village because children have started taking up high jump,” said the proud father.

Kushare has hit peak form in his early 30s, breaking the eight-year-old national record last month with a jump of 2.31 metres at the Inter-State athletics championships in Bhubaneswar. He is now the oldest active Indian athlete to hold a national record.

Praising Kushare, Tejaswin Shankar, the previous record holder and star decathlete, had said in a post on X: “With this mark achieved, it is a mental barrier broken and the 2.34m or 2.35m mark is not far now.”

At the World Championships last year, Kushare became the first Indian high jumper to enter the final; he eventually finished at sixth place.

Kushare’s previous coach, Raosaheb Jadhav, talks about the high jump revolution the athlete has inspired in Devargaon village. “Today, I am training more than 30 children. I retired four years back as a physical education teacher, but the children won’t stop coming to me. After Kushare started winning national medals nearly a decade ago, the first batch of 12 boys picked up the sport. All of them changed the fortunes of their families by securing a job,” Jadhav, who spotted Kushare, said.

When Kushare was going for the national record mark last month, his current coach Jithin Thomas had only one thing to say: “If you cross 2.30m today, your name will be remembered for as long as high jump is in this country.”

Kushare, too, had expressed confidence after breaking the record. “Now that the psychological barrier of 2.30m mark is gone, I believe I can do a lot better,” he had said.

On Friday, when Kushare was jumping in Monaco, Thomas watched with anxiety, about 1,700 kilometres away in Spala, Poland, where Indian athletes are at a training camp for the Commonwealth Games.

“I had asked him to make history once, but this boy keeps on making a name for himself,” he said. “It is a big moment for the Indian high jump scene. Before this, no Indian high jumper had participated in a Diamond League. Sarvesh showed that Indian jumpers are made for big leagues,” Thomas, who is a former high jumper and Asian Championships medallist, said.