Why Animesh Kujur prefers running in outer lanes over the 200m

4 min readNew DelhiJul 26, 2026 12:58 PM Martin Owens isn’t a weather whiner but he wasn’t pleased with the gloomy skies in Glasgow on Friday, the day he landed in the host city of the Commonwealth Games.
Owens knows the ins and outs of speed as he is the man Animesh Kujur, the 200 metre national record holder, trusts as his coach. Owens hopes it gets a little brighter the time Kujur settles into the starting blocks.
“If Animesh goes below 20 (seconds) in Glasgow on a grey, miserable afternoon, it will be a phenomenal run,” Owens said. “He just needs to focus on racing. It isn’t about chasing records. Championships are about medals,” Owens said to put in perspective what is at stake.
At the 2025 Asian Athletics Championships, Kujur lowered his 200 metres national record to 20.32 seconds. This year, he’s run two blering 100 metres — 10.14 seconds in Wetzlar, Germany, and 10.15 seconds in Ranchi. The run in Wetzlar was the fastest an Indian on foreign soil. But at the Commonwealth Games, Kujur will focus on his pet event, the 200 metres.
If Kujur does not qualify for the final, Owens said he would be disappointed because the 23-year-old sprinter has improved on multiple fronts — the start, running on the curve and top speed.
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“He has improved his start immensely, he is running his bend so much better, his top speed is better, and his endurance is better,” Owens, the head coach at the Odisha Reliance Foundation High Performance Centre, said.Story continues below this ad
“If you look at what his 100 metres time was when he came to the high performance centre in Odisha, you’ll see that he’s come down something like 0.7. And then he’s improved his 200m 0.8. He’s in good shape at the moment. A lot of that improvement is just learning to run technically,” Owens said.
The coach wants Kujur to remain unflustered when the gun goes off and not let his race be dictated what others are doing.“Obviously, because of the radius of the circle everybody starts in a stagger. So it’s about not panicking if things aren’t going right, or people appear ahead. Do the first 30 (metres) hard and then the next part is about coming off the bend. It’s all about trying to be as effective and as efficient as possible. And running your own race, especially when he gets to these better meets. You know, in India, he can just turn up and win,” Owens said.
Owens is also hoping that Animesh can run in one of his preferred outer lanes. “We like the outer lanes, really. The curves are a little bit kinder. If you are on the inner lanes, you can watch what everybody else is doing and can follow what’s going on. So that’s an advantage there. But people tend to run a little wider subconsciously on the inner lane. But some people just like the easier curve. Animesh prefers lane 6 or 7,” Owens said.
With the Asian Games starting in the third week of September, Owens is confident Animesh can hit peak form twice — at the CWG and then the Asiad. “It is possible for an athlete to peak twice in a year. I am hoping he will peak here (Glasgow). We will go back and do some work after the CWG and then he will peak at the Asian Games again.”