Pole vault national record bettered twice as Dev, Kuldeep try to outdo each other

3 min readUpdated: May 25, 2026 01:07 AM IST

Day Three of Federation Cup looked to be meandering unlike Saturday when three national records were broken, till pole vaulters Dev Meena and Kuldeep Yadav took centrestage.

The duo, who train together at the Madhya Pradesh Academy, broke the national record twice and equalled it once.

It was Meena who first cleared 5.42m, improving the national mark set by Kuldeep earlier this year by a centimetre.

Minutes later, Kuldeep went past the 5.45m mark to reclaim the national record. Meena was not done for the day and equalled the mark to share bragging rights.

Both attempted 5.50m but couldn’t clear the mark. Meena won the gold medal on countback as his second-best attempt was 5.42m while Kuldeep’s was 5.30m.

“We had the 5.50m mark in mind when we came here. We went for that but I’m glad that our boys could improve the national record,” said Ghanshyam Yadav, the coach who trains both athletes.

Training together and competing against each other have made both better at their craft.

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“It is a privilege to compete together. We have been competing together since we were kids. We have been competing since we used to jump 4.50 or 4.60m,” Dev said after the event.

The duo has been in the spotlight since last year and have improved the national record three times this year much like the sprint duo of Gurindervir Singh and Animesh Kujur.

Takes two to tango

One of the reasons Indian pole vaulters are improving is the competition. “We are seeing so many kids who are doing 5.20m at the junior level. Earlier, this was not the case. For the longest time, we had 5.30m as the national record,” explained Ghanshyam.

While Dev has been training with Ghanshyam since he was a kid, Kuldeep joined him last year.

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“Kuldeep was not finding any academy to train at and when he asked me, I said yes. I have two kinds of vaulters now. Dev is speedy while Kuldeep is a power vaulter. It is good to train them together. Both are of the same age and I find it easy to instruct them together,” he said.

They push each other constantly. Dev said he likes Kuldeep’s competitive mindset while Kuldeep said that he likes Dev’s technical ability.

Both of them have breached the qualification mark for the Commonwealth Games but it will now depend on the selection committee who they choose in the event.

Medallists:

Men’s: Long Jump: Sreeshankar Murali (8.08m), Lokesh Satyanathan (7.94m), Md Atta Sazid (7.90m); High Jump: Sarvesh Anil Kushare (2.28m), Aadarsh Ram (2.22m), Sudeep (2.12m); 110m hurdles: Tejas Shirse (13.50s), Krishik M (13.52s), Md Lazan (13.83s)