CHENNAI: Thanjavur pole vaulter C Reegan, who initially honed his craft with bamboo sticks on sand pits, struck gold with a leap of 5.30m in the men’s event of the inaugural National Indoor Athletics meet in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday. En route, he breached the Commonwealth Games qualification mark and recorded a new personal best. He is only the third Indian to go past the 5.30m mark after Siva Subramani (5.31m) and Dev Meena (5.40m).Reegan, born to farmer parents in Thanjavur district, was elated and grateful to see his years of hard work pay off.“I was training at the Don’s Pole Vault Academy and trained really hard for five years. I had a lot of failed jumps and have escaped death too many times. There was an iron box below and I fell into it many times. I think it’s all that hard work and effort that has helped me. I also helped my parents a lot after school; I would carry sacks and other things. That kind of helped me gain that raw power in the initial stages,” Reegan told TOI from Bhubaneswar.The 24-year-old attempted to clear the 5.41m mark to set a new national record but failed to do so. “I can definitely clear the national record next time. I also want to clear 5.45m soon to make the Asian Games qualification mark,” Reegan said confidently. “In pole vault, 50% is physical and 50% is mental. We need to have immense confidence in ourselves; only then can we dream of becoming a Duplantis. I watch a lot of his videos to learn tactics and one day I’ll compete with him.”However, Reegan considers Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie, who held the pole vault world record at 6.16m, as his inspiration.“Because in pole vault, height is an added advantage and when I picked up the sport, a lot of comments were made like: ‘you’re so short, how would you compete?’ And Renaud is 1.77m, just 3 cm taller than me. If he can break world records with a shorter height, so can I. I grew up watching a lot of his videos on YouTube for motivation,” said Reegan, who is training at the Reliance Foundation High Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar currently.
