“What I felt after he crossed the finish line can’t be expressed in words,” Thennarasu said. “Not even in my dreams.” He paused. “But when he started progressing and doing well, I could see he had a hunger to win and one day he would do something big.”

India has a proud history of quarter-milers. The country’s most celebrated runner happens to be the late Milkha Singh who had clocked 45.6 seconds in 1960 Rome Olympics.

Like Milkha, Vishal’s tale too has many hardships. He left home at a young age to move to the Sports Hostel in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Tamil Nadu. He ran 100m and 200m and was good at it. He had no plans to change.

“The stadium became my home at a very early age. I used to miss my parents a lot and didn’t have any idea about the magnitude of what I could achieve,” he said. “But I told myself that if you have to become great, you have to make sacrifices. I never thought of running 400m,” he said. “But my coach Sreenivasan told me I would do much better at the quarter-mile.”

Sreenivasan had scouted him through the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu programme and his first thought was simple: Why is this guy running 100 and 200m? “I have seen the anatomical structure of his body. He is a tall runner and his speed is very good. He didn’t have the explosive strength of a 100m sprinter but his tall frame and strides were really good for 400m. I was convinced he would do well in the 400m,” Sreenivasan said. “It took me some time to convince him.”

Vishal was 21. Switching events at that age — abandoning years of training — is not a decision athletes take on a whim. “I trust my coach. I knew if I give 100%, new or old event, doesn’t matter.” In 2024, Vishal clocked 46.77 seconds as his season best. Good enough to earn a call to the national camp and a meeting with Australian coach Jason Dawson.

Dawson had a reputation for demanding total commitment from his athletes. He had been frustrated by national campers who came and went. Vishal came and stayed. “He just asked me to trust him and we’ll get the results,” Vishal said. “I told him — coach, I’m all yours. Just make me a better runner.”

Sreenivasan, who gave up his own charge of Vishal to send him to Dawson, told him: “I know the basics but Jason will take you to the world level.”

Three months after clocking his first sub-46 run — 45.57 seconds at the Asian Athletics Championships in May 2025, missing the podium by 0.02 seconds — Vishal shattered the national record at the Inter-State Championships with 45.12 seconds. Then, in Ranchi, 44.98.

“He took me from 46.77 to 44.98,” Vishal said. “I trust him blindly and so does he.”

The father with modest goals of taking his son to the stadium so that he could walk normally, never imagined he would be flying on the track one day to enter the record books. And when it happened, he ran across a track to hold his son — the fastest Indian quarter-miler who has ever lived. Thennarasu didn’t say anything for some time. He just held on.