Over five decades have passed, but Thaduthuvila Chandapillai Yohannan, the genial octogenarian, recounts that day in Tehran with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old.It’s the 1974 Asian Games and the then 28-year-old long jumper’s left toe is swollen. He walks onto the runway, taking painkillers.Yohannan’s first attempt lands at 7.25m. The pain shoots up and he takes more painkillers. The second one hits 7.8m and the third is a foul.On his fourth attempt, something clicks. He lands at 8.07m, a leap that would remain an Asian record for three decades.“As I was standing at the podium, with the national anthem playing in the background, I knew I had achieved something momentous,” he told TOI. Yohannan could not sleep that night, partly due to the swelling on his toe. The national anthem was still playing in his mind.As the Asian Games begin in Japan today, Yohannan’s gold medal assumes significance. Kerala will be represented by 28 athletes, continuing 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 3km to school. My friend Georgekutty dared me to jump across the stream. I jumped and landed in 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. “This time, I cleared it. My father rewarded me with a glass of buttermilk. Unknowingly, this was the start of my athletics career. My father was my inspiration,” he said with a laugh. In school, Yohannan would participate in every event, be it sprints, long jump or high jump.The youngest of six brothers, Yohannan’s athletics journey ran through a steel plant in Bhilai, where one of his elder brothers worked. He joined NCC and started turning up at the plant’s meets. “I once ran 100m in 10.6 seconds,” he said. A sports division officer at the plant, who was impressed, pointed him toward the long jump pit.Yohannan was just 5’9”, short by long jump standards. He made up for it with speed off the runway, a strong core and a leg extension that stretched every cm during take-off. “You must be quick and have strong abdominal muscles. I used to practice six hours a day,” he said.After securing a diploma in mechanical engineering in 1970, he joined TELCO (now Tata Motors) where sports officer Suresh Gujarati used innovative methods like setting up high hurdles at the end of the runway to help Yohannan gain extra height during flight.He jumped using the hand-and-arm technique, arms sweeping through the air to fight the forward rotation that take-off creates, buying the body just enough balance to stretch during landing. Today’s jumpers mostly favour the hitchhiking style, legs cycling through the air like a person running on nothing. “The sport has moved on. I was the product of an earlier generation,” he said.At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, he couldn’t touch the qualifying mark of 7.8m and finished 16th, with a foot ailment flaring at the worst-possible moment. “If I had matched my Tehran timing, I would have bagged a bronze at Montreal,” he said.In 1978, while training at Patiala’s National Institute of Sports, he jumped into a pit that should have been filled with sand and sawdust. But rain had made it soggy. “As I jumped, the ground underneath me sank. My ligament was ruptured,” he recalled.He was admitted to a local hospital that evening. Tatas stepped in and moved him to Gangaram Hospital in Delhi. “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 I had more to achieve as an athlete,” he rued.TELCO moved him to the sales department, where he built a second career, before he shifted 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 conditions align. Ancy Sojan, who broke Anju Bobby George’s 22-year-old national record, can clear 7m. They are medal prospects in Japan,” he said.When asked why ex-cricketer Tinu didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps, he joked: “Tinu was not willing to work hard, which is why he became a fast bowler.” Seventy years after he fell into a stream, climbed out and set a record, Yohannan has still not lost his zest for life.
