There’s now a band of Indians threatening to breach the 10.15 second mark. In 2022, Amlan Borgohain set a time of 10.25 seconds. Manikanta Hoblidhar responded with a 10.22 in 2025. On the same day and track, Gurindervir Singh’s 10.20 set a new standard. A couple of months later, on July 5, Animesh Kujur, Indian athletics’ latest poster boy on track, set a new national record of 10.18.

Three years, four athletes and bringing down the mark by 0.08 seconds. There are others, too. In Chennai at the ongoing national inter-state, S Tamilarasu clocked 10.22 seconds, the fourth fastest Indian ever. He’s of the belief that he can, in the future, bring that down even further.

In the world of elite sport, change can often be non-linear and the pace of said change can be glacial but that’s how marginal increments work.

The margins currently being knocked off can be traced back to when James Hillier entered India’s athletics programme in 2019. “I think you got to go right back to the start,” Hillier, who used to work with England Athletics, tells this daily. “When we started this project in 2019, what were our goals? It was to professionalise athletics in India. Our goals were to bring in high levels of technical expertise. When I first came to India, everyone said ‘Indian athletes can’t do that, they can’t do this. I used to always question that narrative. Why can’t we? I think 6 per cent of 1.4 billion Indians have access to track, it’s still a huge number.”

One of the things he changed immediately was to challenge belief systems but he made it a point to embrace Indian culture. “What you are seeing is the result of Martin (Owens; Kujur works with him in Bhubaneswar),” he says. “Now we are getting athletes we don’t even coach that are doing well. Because we have directly impacted the whole ecosystem.”

In the last two years alone, Indian athletes have set new benchmarks in both sprints, the men’s four by one as well as the two high hurdles.

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