At 17, Shaili is where Anju was at 22, says coach Bobby George

Robert Bobby George still remembers a shy, frail girl, hiding behind one of his trainees and asking him, “sir aap mujhe bhi le loge (will you pick me for your academy)?”

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That was the first time Robert saw Shaili Singh. It was in Guntur, at the National Junior Championships in 2017. Shaili was competing in the under-14 category. She was supposed to do the high jump, but did not get entry. So she switched to long jump instead. Robert was there as a scout.

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“If she had been competing in the high jump, I would not have noticed her. What I liked is that she was putting everything in her jumps. She had grace, positive energy, a spark about her. She was whispering something to herself seriously after every jump. She was not winning but she was not willing to give up,” George said over the phone, a few days after Shaili won the long jump silver at the U20 World Athletics Championship on August 22.

But back in 2017, Robert had still not made up his mind about getting Shaili to the academy he and his wife Anju Bobby George, the national record holder in long jump, run on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

But, ten days after Robert first saw Shaili, she also drew Anju's attention at a local competition. When the husband and wife exchanged notes, they were surprised to find a name in common. Shaili was then a trainee at the Lucknow sports hostel, but she was yet to take up a sport seriously. With her move to the George's academy, that changed.

It was also a much-needed break for Shaili, whose mother Vinita was single-handedly raising three children in Jhansi.

“What can I say about the problems that we faced. I don’t want to discuss much but my mother is a very strong woman and she was managing somehow. It was tough for my mother to spend on my training, diet. After I came to Bengaluru everything changed for me. It was like a new Shaili,” said Shaili on Wednesday on her return from Nairobi, where she missed out on a gold by a centimeter with her 6.59m jump.

Flanked by Anju and Robert, Shaili was perfectly at ease with her new status of being a teenage athletics sensation. When asked about Neeraj Chopra, who won gold at the world junior championships in 2017 and created history with a gold at the Olympics Shaili said, "This is a beginning for me. I also wanted to start with a gold like him. Even silver is good. It was like gold for me. I couldn’t believe it when I made that jump. It was my first international competition."

To make it here, Shaili had to make a major transformation in her physique. In 2018, when she first came to the academy, she weighed just 38kg—a nearly-emaciated girl who could barely jump 4.5m.

The first thing Robert did was to put her on an enhanced protein diet.

“She used to be a vegetarian but soon she was eating eight eggs every day,” he said.

“Muscles aa raha hai sir!” an excited Shaili would often tell Robert.

In 10 months, Shaili added 14kg of mostly lean muscle and improving her jump by big margins.

“She is a very fast learner and mentally strong,” Robert said. “And she just loves long jumps, loves to train and she can bear the pain of training."

With those added muscles, Shaili also added plenty of speed in her run. She can already accelerate to 9.26 m/s—for comparison, Anju ran 9.8m/s at her peak.

“Her speed is as good as a top 100m sprinter and with her growth and more intense power training, she will improve," Robert said.

She is equally good with the hitch-kick (cycling in the air) technique to get the extension in the jumps. “She has the same grit and determination as Anju. Shaili is at 17 what Anju was at 22,” Robert, who was also Anju’s coach, said. Anju though was initially a triple jumper before switching to long jump.

“She is the next big star of Indian athletics, just wait and watch for Shaili Singh.”

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