Kuldeep Kumar trains with the best, to become the best

After two years in which he was unable to improve on his junior national record, 21-year-old pole vaulter Kuldeep Singh moved to Bhopal to train alongside record holder Dev Kumar Meena. That stint has paid off with Kuldeep eventually improving on Dev’s own national mark.

Not too many eyes would have been on Kuldeep Kumar when he competed at the 1st Indian Indoor Open Combined Events & Pole Vault Competition at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneshwar last week. Although he had once held the Indian junior national record of 5.17m set three years ago as an 18-year-old, Kuldeep hadn’t really been able to assert himself since then as a dominant force in the pole vault event in India.

Over the last couple of years, Dev Meena had become the Indian standard bearer in the sport with a national record of 5.40m, while Tamil Nadu’s G Reegan had burst into the reckoning with a clearance of 5.35m at the start of the season. Both were competing in Bhubaneswar and Kuldeep says he felt he needed to prove a point.

READ | Kuldeep Kumar sets new national pole vault record in Bhubaneswar

“When I came into this competition I felt I wasn’t really doing well as an athlete. I felt I needed to show what I was capable of,” he tells Sportstar.

He did just that. In Bhubaneshwar, Kuldeep cleared a height of 5.41m, to set a new senior national record – erasing the mark that Dev Meena had set at the World University Games last year.

While he’s happy to have claimed the record, Kuldeep feels like he has missed out. After clearing 5.41m, he had set the bar at 5.46m. “I could have got 5.46m as well. In my third attempt I nearly cleared the bar but I hit it with my ankle on the way down. If I had cleared that height I would have qualified for the Asian Games. (Athletics Federation of India has set the qualification standard for the Asian Games at 5.45m). No Indian has ever qualified for the men’s pole vault for the Asian Games. I really wanted to be the first,” says Kuldeep.

Kuldeep didn’t start his athletics career with the intention of making history in his event. But although the pole vault isn’t the most popular event in athletics, it was perhaps inevitable that he would take up the sport. Growing up in the village of Alawalpur, some 30km outside Prayagraj (Allahabad), all four of Kuldeeps’s elder brothers were pole vaulters.

Family tradition

“Pole vault isn’t the most popular event in athletics in India but there are a few vaulters from my area. My uncle also used to take part in this event but he used to use a bamboo pole rather than the fiberglass ones we use these days. He influenced my elder brothers as well. They used to travel to Prayagraj to train in the sports stadium there and took a room on rent to stay in the city,” he says.

When he was in class 8, Kuldeep joined his brothers in Prayag. He’d study in the morning and then train in the evening. Their father, a farmer would send them 4000 rupees each month and bring cows milk from the village every few days. The five brothers would look out for each other. “The five of us stayed in a single room. My eldest brother Dhirendra was a good jumper and even jumped 4.90m as a junior. But he was very clear that his priority was to support me. He wanted that I should be able to be a sportsperson without anything holding me back,” he recalls. And although his brothers were pole vaulters, there was no pressure on him to also take up the sport. “I was actually doing the high jump along with the pole vault. I even got my first national medal – a silver at the U-16 nationals in the high jump rather than the pole vault,” he says.

That early success caused some to suggest Kuldeep take up the high jump rather than the pole vault. “I had a lot of seniors come and suggest that I focus on the high jump. (World Championships high jump finalist) Sarvesh Kushare bhai,knew my eldest brother because they were both in the army and he too suggested that I had better chance as a high jumper but I was determined to be a pole vaulter. After a point of time I was so frustrated with people asking me to chose the high jump that I decided I would give it up and not even treat it as a secondary event,” he says.

That decision wasn’t easy and once again Kuldeep was asked to chose. That moment came in 2022 when, owing to his national medal, he was called up for a trial at the National Center of Excellence in Bangalore. Kuldeep took part in trials in both the pole vault and the high jump. He cleared a height of 4.20m in the former and 1.85cm in the latter and was told that there was only room to admit him as a high jumper.

“I was told that I could only join the NCOE as a high jumper. At that time I was desperate to join a major training center and so I said that I would only train as a high jumper,” he says.

Within a couple of days though he went to his coach – national women’s high jump record holder Sahana Kumari – and told her that he didn’t want to be a high jumper. “I told her that my dream was to be a pole vaulter. Sahana ma’am was very supportive. She allowed me to train in the sport I wanted,” he says.

Although he was given the opportunity to train as a pole vaulter, Kuldeep recalls he was told he would have to improve his pole vault jump from 4.20m to 4.60m within a half a year if we was to be avoid being weeded out. He would do even better and clear 4.80m in the same period.

The following year he would break the 5.00m barrier at the National Games in Goa and then set a new junior national record of 5.17m at the junior national championships in Coimbatore. That mark saw him qualify for the junior Asian Championships and world Championships.

Career stagnation

But just as he was looking to break through to the seniors, Kuldeep stumbled. After disagreeing with his coach in Bengaluru about training, he packed his bags and headed to Delhi to train on his own. The results weren’t what he had hoped for.

He injured his head when he fell awkwardly on the edge of the landing mat during training and followed that up with a hamstring injury. The latter hurt his chances at the Junior Asian championships in Dubai where he finished 7th with an under par jump of 4.80m.

Despite undergoing rehabilitation for his injury, Kuldeep’s middling form continued. He finished third at the 2025 National Games in February, seventh at the Federation Championships in April and fifth at the National championships in September. His personal best was still the 5.17m he had jumped two years before.

The following month, Kuldeep moved his training center once again. This time to the Madhya Pradesh Athletics Academy in Bhopal where national record holder Dev Meena was training alongside coach Ghanshyam Yadav.

“I felt I needed to train along with someone who could push me as well. At first I was not certain whether I would be able to train with Dev. While we were friendly with each other, we are also competitors. First my eldest brother spoke with him and his coach and they agreed to let me train alongside them,” he says.

The decision has paid off. In March, at the Indian Open Jumps competition, Kuldeep cleared 5.25m, finally improving on the 5.17m he had jumped as a junior, 26 months before. Although he had finished behind Dev Meena there, he’d get in front of his training partner with the new national record.

Despite taking the record from Dev Meena, Kuldeep insists there’s no hard feelings between the two. While they both are competitors they do have things in common. Both are 21-years-old and are nearly the same height, although Dev is a couple of centimetres taller than the 179cm tall Kuldeep. “Ours is a very friendly rivalry. We train together and we get along well with each other. I’m thankful to Dev because he helped me to push myself. Both of us push each other I think the difference in my career has come because I have a training partner as good as him,” he says.

Kuldeep says he’s hopeful the two can continue to push each other to greater accomplishments. “First Dev had the national record and then I got it. But both of us will try to see how much we can push the record to. So far no Indian men’s pole vaulter has ever qualified for the Asian Games and we are hoping both of us can do that as well,” he says.

Published on May 10, 2026