By Sushant Singh

Many sports fans were disappointed after India’s senior women’s high jump national record holder and teen sensation Pooja finished 7th in the women’s high jump final at the World Athletics U20 Championships 2026.

Pooja successfully cleared 1.75m, 1.80m, and 1.84m during the final. The 19-year-old was unable to clear 1.87m and ended her campaign with a best clearance of 1.84m.

But why did India’s Pooja, one of the country’s biggest medal hopes, fail to deliver on the world’s biggest stage?

To understand that, we first have to understand why she was considered one of India’s strongest medal hopes at the World U20 Championships.

Pooja has been one of India’s most consistent athletes over the years. Since 2022, when her personal best was 1.71m, she has improved it to 1.93m.

Since 2023, she has competed in 29 high jump competitions and has cleared 1.80m or higher around 21 times. During this period, she continuously improved her personal bests to 1.82m, 1.85m, 1.89m, and finally 1.93m.

What is even more interesting is that she has often produced her personal best performances at the biggest competitions of her career.

 – 1.82m — her first-ever clearance above 1.80m, achieved while winning silver at the Asian U20 Championships, which was the biggest competition of her life at that time.

 – 1.83m — at the 2024 World Athletics U20 Championships.

 – 1.85m — at the 2024 Junior Nationals in the heptathlon, an event she was competing in for the first time in her life.

The biggest performance of her career came at the Asian Athletics Championships 2025, where she was the youngest member of the Indian contingent yet stunned everyone by winning gold and becoming Asian champion with a clearance of 1.89m.

Later, at the Asian U20 Championships, she cleared 1.93m, shattering the Indian national record and becoming the first Indian woman ever to clear that height.

During the 2024 South Asian Games, in an interview with NNIS Sports, Pooja and her former coach Balwan Parta said:

“She is a big-game player. She never posts her PBs during practice, but always does it in competition.”

So what really happened at the biggest competition of her life, the World Athletics U20 Championships 2026?

Pooja had been saying since the beginning of this year that World U20 was her top priority for the season, and she had been training specifically for it.

She started the season early, competing at the Asian Indoor Championships, where she won silver with 1.87m — then the second-best clearance of her career, achieved in her first competition of the season.

Just one competition later, she improved her personal best to 1.90m. Then, at the Asian U20 Championships at Indira Gandhi Stadium on 29 May 2026, she again produced a major performance. Interestingly, almost exactly a year earlier, on 30 May 2025, she had cleared 1.89m to become Asian champion.

The peaking of the body in athletics, especially in jumps, works very differently. Coaches and support staff often have to plan the entire competition calendar before the season even begins — deciding which competitions to target, which to skip, and when the athlete should reach peak condition.

This year has been challenging for many athletes, not just Pooja, with the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games falling in the same year. For Pooja, the challenge was even greater, as she had to manage three major competitions, including the World U20 Championships.

Pooja had not originally included the Commonwealth Games 2026 in her competition calendar, but after achieving the qualification standard, she competed in Glasgow and finished 8th. Less than nine days later, she was competing again at the World U20 Championships.

Another interesting point is that the top five athletes in the world U20 season rankings before the championship were:

  • Izobelle Louison-Roe
  • Pooja
  • Lilianna Bátori
  • Ella Mikkola
  • Aitana Alonso

Remarkably, four of those five athletes finished in the top four at the World Championships, taking gold, silver, bronze, and fourth place. Only Pooja finished outside the top five.

NNIS Sports has also learned that a few days before leaving for the Commonwealth Games, Pooja spent some time in Delhi for visa appointments. She had been planning to join an international training camp in Poland, but due to visa delays she remained in Delhi for several days and even trained at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium instead of staying at her regular training base, the Anju Bobby George Academy in Bengaluru.

She later returned to Bengaluru after continued visa delays and eventually planned to travel directly to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games. This may have affected her preparation

Although she is only 19 years old, expectations around her have risen because she has performed at such a high level and made people believe that she could be India’s next big thing in the jumps.

This disappointing campaign will surely give her valuable experience. The expectation now is that she will learn from this setback and bounce back strongly, with the Asian Games 2026 likely to be her next major target, where she is expected to represent India in the women’s high jump.