17-year-old boy from India makes a rare cut to top five in world ranking in Hurdles

It has never been easy for Indian to crack the top most layer of world athletics. Be it the junior groups or the senior competition, the competition has always been tougher. One caneasily relate this to the fact that even the best of India, doesn’t stand anywhere near thetop-50 of the world.

But a young 17-year-old lad from Kerala has found his match for the ground as he rises tonumber three in the world ranking in athletics. Muhammed Hanan has managed to clockthe third best timing in Under-18 boys in 110 hurdles as per the latest ranking of the WorldAthletics.

The remarkable achievement came in february this year in Calicut, Odisha. During Southzone Junior Athletics Meet, Malappuram boy clocked 13.8- timing, making him the thirdbest in the world. He is only behind two South African–Michael Jan-de Beer and IsmailMujahid.

Unknown to the world ranking process, Hanan said that he was not aware that such rankingprocesses or listicles existed. He added that he saw his name on the world athleticswebsite two-three days back and since then, his joy knew no bounds.

“It’s Ramadan. So I get more time to sleep and I was dreaming of competing in the Olympics. The feeling is yet to sink and I can hardly believe that I’m in the top three of world rankings,” said Hanan as he spoke to a leading daily.

He also talked about his timing and performance saying that over the years, his timing has improved and the Calicult performance was his best till date adding that even then he did not realise that his performance will bring him to top three of the world in this particular category.

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Entering into athletics was not very difficult for Hanan as both his brothers were hurdlers. He knew the basics from the start but there was still a lot to learn and implement. This is the reason his elder brother Muhammed Harshand, who is doing MPES from MGUniversity, has decided to take Hanan under his wings and teach him everything about the sport.

It was only two years back when he started his training on a synthetic track thanks to hisbrother who saw potential in his younger brother and took him 12 kilometers to Tirur. Andsince then, Hanan has only improved his timings in hurdles.