After Doha Diamond League reality check, Kishore Jena looks to cut down on mistakes

It didn’t appear anything less than an athletic fair as some of India’s best track-and-field athletes went along with their stretches and warm-ups on the training ground for the Federation Cup athletics tournament in Bhubaneswar. Just as they put in the hard yards to get ready for their respective events, loudspeakers at the venue blared the names of those whose time had come.

Amid the loud announcements, however, there was something even more roaring and intense — the thundering javelin hurls from local boy Kishore Jena .

Back home after the disappointment of the Diamond League debut , Jena was giving his everything in every throw. It was just a training session and the distances were not measured, still, Jena kept piercing the ground menacingly with his powerful throws.

Kishore Jena practices in Bhubaneswar ahead of his showdown with Neeraj Chopra in Federation Cup pic.twitter.com/nSDU73FJDz

— Ujwal (@UjwalKS) May 14, 2024

His disappointment and the attempts to recover from it is understandable.

Olympic and world champion Neeraj Chopra is India’s undisputed best in javelin but Jena has managed to carve a space for himself in the Indian consciousness on the back of a stellar 2023 season.

In his six-year career, Jena had never breached the 80m mark before making an astonishing leap last year. In 2023, the Odia athlete crossed the 80m mark seven times, including the monstrous 87.54m which helped him win silver at the Hangzhou Asian Games and seal a spot at the Paris Olympics. Competing alongside him, Neeraj won gold with a gigantic 88.88m throw.

But last week, Jena managed only a best of 76.31m, getting knocked out from the 10-man Doha Diamond League javelin final in the ninth spot.

It was a reality check for the son of a paddy farmer who has experienced multiple hardships but was still left stunned by the fickle nature of the sport. You can be great one day and not good enough the next.

For Jena, it was the self-assured hubris that became his Achilles’ heel in Doha.

“As we know Javelin is a technical event, and there were some issues with my run-up. The warmup was good but I guess I was a little overconfident. I have to deal with it now,” Jena said on the eve of the final of the Federation Cup at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar.

But back among his people, Jena also knows there’s no point sulking or seething with the Paris Olympics only a little over two months away. He’s hoping to weed out the mistakes he made at the Diamond League from his game and carry forward the learnings from the elite athlete meet.

“I was in good form but faced problems at the event and couldn’t do well. I made mistakes at the Diamond League but learnt a lot from the competition. That learning should help in the future and you should see better results,” he added.

“My focus is only on doing well and not to repeat the mistakes I did there. People love me here and they will support me. So I want to do well.”

Doing well at the Federation Cup is going to be a timely boost for Jena but even though it’s a domestic competition, he is sure to have things tough against Neeraj, who is set to perform in India for the first time in three years .

So far, Jena hasn’t been able to get the better of Neeraj and while he acknowledges the greatness of the Haryana athlete, he is equally hungry to win medals.

“Every athlete dreams about a medal. We practice for the medal only,” he shared.

The fight for the biggest medal of all is just a few months away and it’s the perfect time for the javelin star to get everything in order after a setback which if used properly could prove to be a blessing in disguise.