15 minutes is what decided West Bengal’s athlete Moumita Mondal fate on an eventful day of Athletics at the National Games 2025 at the Maharana Pratap Sports College on Sunday.
The athlete from West Bengal won two medals while shuffling between 110m hurdles (silver medal) and long jump event (gold medal).
She is used to playing in events usually overlapping with others but this was the first time that she finished one event and rushed back to the other one with lactic acid troubling her.
Moumita gave tough competition to National record holder Jyothi Yarraji and clocked her personal best of 13.36s to win the silver and surprised everyone with a jump of 6.21m to win the long jump gold.
“If I had more time to recover, I might have jumped closer to my personal best (6.41m) and achieved better timing in the hurdles,” Moumita told The Indian Express after her double medal-winning feat.
Suffering from the exhaustion of the hurdle race, Moumita jumped a sub-par 5.96m in her first attempt at the long jump.
Following the poor jump, Moumita decided to skip the second attempt and take extra rest. The rest helped her eventually as she touched the 6m mark on her third attempt and bettered it further to record the gold medal-winning mark of 6.21m on the fifth attempt.
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“I was very tired during the first jumpt as my body refused to run post the hurdles. That is why I skipped the second attempt which gave me ample amount to rest and recover. Had the events been not too close, I would have easily touched my personal best in the long jump,” Moumita explained.
Moumita and her coaching staff knew about the clash of events when the tentative schedule came in and tried to talk to the officials about it.
“We tried to talk with the federation regarding the timing of the event but it didn’t help much. If the hurdle event was after the jump, it would have been better but that’s how it is now,” quipped Moumita.
Interesting choice of events
Usually you won’t find athletes doing one track event and one field event, but Moumita enjoys her time doing both.
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However, there are challenges she has to face due to her shorter stature. Specially in hurdles where her body knocks out the hurdles more often than not.
“I am very happy that today I didn’t knock any hurdle down. Due to my height, whenever I try to cut the hurdles faster, the hurdle gets knocked out costing me my personal bests,” said Moumita.
“Also due to my jumping practice, I fly over hurdles wasting more time. The height of the hurdle is 84 centimetres and I usually go at 95-100 cms,” she explained further.
To put in context, if a hurdler keeps the minimum gap between their body and the hurdle, they save a lot of time.
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But due to her shorter stature and jumping technique, Moumita loses a lot of time while crossing the hurdles.
“I am trying to improve the gap between body and the hurdle while crossing the hurdle. My speed between the hurdles have improved and the next thing I will work on my technique of crossing the hurdles,” said Moumita.
When asked about if she will ever choose between her events, Moumita quipped,” I will not choose between them and do both along with heptathlon. My coach James Hillier calls me ‘Bengal Tiger’ and the Bengal Tiger never gives up.”
Grinding hard at the national circuit for past five years, Moumita finally had her breakthrough moment and as she claims, the journey has just started for the Bengal Tiger.
