The rain had made the runway at Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium challenging to navigate. As Karthik Unnikrishnan prepared for the biggest competition of his career, the steady downpour only added to the difficulty. At 33, an age when many triple jumpers might be contemplating the closing stages of their careers, he was only just making his international debut at the Asian Games.
Karthik was 33 and appearing at the Asian Games for the first time. He had waited for years for the opportunity and spent just as long wondering whether it would ever arrive.
There was another setback waiting for him on the runway. Praveen Chithravel, India's bronze medallist from the 2022 Asian Games, suffered a muscle injury during his opening attempt and was forced out without completing a jump. The entire Indian challenge in the event was suddenly resting on Karthik, who had arrived in Nagoya already aware that this could be the only major continental Games of his career.
It was certainly not the debut Karthik had envisioned. Then again, very little in his career has unfolded according to plan.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS IN KERALA
Born in 1993, Karthik has been part of India's triple jump circuit since 2015. He was not a late entrant into athletics, but circumstances outside the sport slowed his progress. His parents ran a tea shop in Ooty, while he was raised at his maternal grandparents' house in Kerala. Academics did not come naturally to him, and when his family saw a six-foot-tall youngster who needed some direction, sport seemed like the natural choice.
At Parali High School in Palakkad, Karthik was initially assigned to the hurdles, but he struggled there. Living away from his parents and failing to find success either in studies or athletics, he soon began battling self-doubt. He cried and felt isolated. His eventual move to the triple jump brought occasional success, but his progress again stalled at the state level.
He then lowered the scale of his ambitions. Rather than comparing himself with national-level athletes, he concentrated on what seemed achievable at the time: simply earning the chance to wear the Kerala state jersey.
THE ACCIDENTAL BREAKTHROUGH
Karthik's career took an unexpected turn when he was brought in as an injury replacement at a national competition and surprisingly finished second. That performance attracted the attention of coach P.G. Manoj, who offered him some straightforward advice: get a job first and work out the rest afterward.
That stability arrived through the sports quota in the Indian Air Force. It was a huge moment for his family, which initially, and amusingly, believed that an Air Force job meant Karthik would become a pilot.
Instead, the Air Force exposed him to a level of competition he had never experienced before. There, a domestic medal was merely the beginning. Training alongside jumpers who were targeting achievements far beyond the state level gradually changed his own ambitions. His targets moved from 15 metres to 16 metres and eventually to 17 metres. The Asian Games and the Olympics, once distant dreams, began to feel attainable.
CARRYING THE BAGGAGE
The downside of dreaming bigger is that failure becomes much more tangible. It is no longer just a vague disappointment; it starts taking specific forms.
Over the following years, circumstances repeatedly interrupted Karthik's progress. The Covid-19 lockdowns left him stranded in Patiala, away from his support network. His recovery after the pandemic, combined with the absence of his coach, cost him an opportunity at the Tokyo Olympic trials. Then, just after he had entered the select group of Indian athletes to cross 17 metres, an ankle injury during the Commonwealth Games trials ruled him out.
By 2023, a serious tendon injury had affected his muscle coordination so severely that Karthik and his physiotherapist Garima, who is now his wife, had to break down his technique and rebuild his jumping mechanics from scratch.
Taken separately, each setback had an understandable explanation — an infection, a torn tendon or unfortunate timing. Together, however, they became a heavy psychological burden. Every major trial stopped being just another opportunity and became a runway carrying memories of the previous chances he had missed.
By the time Karthik had rebuilt his body and reached a stage where he believed he was capable of a 16.80-metre jump, he was already 33. He arrived in Nagoya carrying nearly a decade of setbacks and near-misses.
WHEN DESTINY REFUSES TO LOSE
The rain continued as Karthik took his six attempts on the runway. He managed to cross the 16-metre mark only once and eventually finished sixth.
For much of his life, Karthik has been engaged in a quiet personal battle with destiny — an invisible opponent that seemed to move the target every time he came close to reaching it. Destiny is often imagined as some enormous, abstract force, but in reality it can be much more ordinary and persistent. It can arrive in the form of unexpected rain, a tendon injury at exactly the wrong moment or an illness that weakens an athlete just before an important trial. Everyone encounters such twists of fate, but for an athlete like Karthik, they unfold beneath the glare of stadium lights.
Destiny may have won the final round in Nagoya, bringing to an end what is likely to be his last appearance on a stage of this magnitude. But Karthik is likely to accept it in the same spirit he has approached everything else, with his familiar smile and a willingness to move forward.
Ultimately, his story is not simply about an athlete competing in the rain. It reflects the everyday struggles people face with poor timing, missed opportunities and constantly shifting goals.
We cannot always decide how fate deals its cards. What we can decide is how we leave the game — without being weighed down by the destination, and satisfied that we had the courage to turn up and take our chance.
