New Delhi, Aug 14: Three athletes, three remarkable comebacks – and three very different stories of resilience. Murali Sreeshankar returned from a career-threatening knee injury to win silver at the 2026 Commonwealth Games.
Tejaswin Shankar, after an injury scare forced him out of the high jump at the same Glasgow Games, regrouped to win bronze in the decathlon just days later. And then there is PV Sindhu, who recently claimed her first Japan Open title, becoming the first Indian to win the prestigious tournament.
Behind these performances is a growing reliance on data, sports science and highly individualised performance programmes. Renowned South African strength and conditioning coach and an athletics performance specialist, Wayne Lombard, who has worked with all three athletes, has seen that process from close quarters-from Sreeshankar’s painstaking rehabilitation and Tejaswin’s remarkable mental turnaround to the data-driven approach behind Sindhu’s resurgence.
In an exclusive interaction with myKhel, Lombard threw light on what it takes to bring an elite athlete back from a serious injury, why Tejaswin’s 48-hour turnaround at the Commonwealth Games was so remarkable, how data is helping extend Sindhu’s career, and why the fundamentals of recovery-sleep and nutrition-still matter more than the latest recovery gadget. Here are the Excerpts:
Q: Murali Sreeshankar’s knee injury kept him away from competition for a long period before he returned to win a Commonwealth Games silver medal. From a sports science perspective, what is the biggest challenge in bringing an explosive long jumper back to that elite level?
Wayne Lombard: The extent of the injury is really important to understand. When someone ruptures their patellar tendon, the mechanics of the knee are completely compromised. Without that patellar tendon, it is impossible to produce the force required in the lower leg to jump horizontally.
Someone like Shree, who produces a lot of force in a horizontal movement, puts significant demands on the patellar tendon. Sometimes around 10 times body weight, or even more depending on the speed of the approach, can go through that tendon during a long jump.
So it is not just what is involved in getting someone to long jump again; it is the extent of the injury that becomes really important to understand.
The injury that Shree had was career-ending. Luckily, he had a really good surgeon at Aspetar who was able to do a brilliant job repairing the structure. Without the surgical intervention, it would have been impossible for him to get back. Obviously, rehabilitation plays a role, but the starting point is that surgical intervention.
For him to come back and produce the performances he has produced is incredible. He has jumped over eight metres in the majority of competitions he has been in since returning. To be out for as long as he was and then have the confidence to come back and produce those performances is incredible. I don’t think people actually understand the magnitude of what he has been able to do.
Q: How do you know when an athlete is physically ready to compete again, and more importantly, mentally ready?
Wayne Lombard: Physically ready is one aspect of it. We obviously track things over time. With someone like Shree, I think it was about two years ago that he reached out to me. His rehabilitation was stagnating a little bit, so he asked if I could get involved and help him.
The starting point with anyone we work with is understanding the basic underlying physiology. The first thing we did was look at blood profiles to understand how his physiology or biochemistry was supporting his recovery processes.
Then we did a lot of testing to understand where he was strength-wise and where we needed to get him to ensure that he was physically ready to perform at the level he eventually did.
That can involve different tests on force plates, run-specific isometrics and isokinetics, which is particularly important for me when dealing with return-to-play situations involving knee injuries. We look at concentric and eccentric contractions and something called the dynamic control ratio, which helps us understand how stable the knee is at certain joint angles.
We get a lot of baseline data initially and then establish where he is and where we think he needs to be to compete again. From there, we map out the process.
Without that baseline data, it becomes very difficult to make inferences about what intervention is required and how long it will take for an athlete to return safely.
Q: How important was athlete feedback in Sreeshankar’s rehabilitation?
Wayne Lombard: There is a lot of data involved, but there is also a lot of back-and-forth contact with the athlete. The difference with someone like Shree is that he knows his body really well and is able to give me very good feedback about what he feels is required.
His dad also played a massive role because he understands long jump really well. Their feedback about what was required to produce the performances he is producing was really important.
Once we had that baseline data, it was quite easy for me to map things out. However, the human body can always adapt or not adapt. It can sometimes be hit and miss.
With someone like Shree, who had a really good baseline of physical fitness, physical capacity, strength and power, recovery was somewhat easier. But the extent of the injury remained extremely important.
The baseline data allowed us to understand what was required not only for him to return safely but also for him to be mentally ready and confident that his body was not going to fail him again.
Q: What was the biggest mental challenge for Sreeshankar during such a long rehabilitation?
Wayne Lombard: When I first met him, I told Shree that he was going to have to really trust the process. It was going to be a real challenge to get to where we are today. I was confident we could get there, but he had to trust the process.
We actually had to take a few steps back before we could take a few steps forward because I felt there were some missing links within his rehabilitation when he approached me.
Going through rehabilitation for a year and a half or two years, not knowing whether you are going to come back or whether you are going to perform at the level you did before the injury, is mentally taxing.
Luckily for Shree, he was able to do that. Kudos to him from a mental standpoint and from a physical resilience perspective. He put in the effort and is now reaping the rewards.
Tejaswin Shankar’s Commonwealth Games turnaround
Q: What are your thoughts on Tejaswin Shankar’s comeback after his injury scare during the high jump at the Commonwealth Games and his subsequent bronze medal in the decathlon?
Wayne Lombard: TJ’s injury was not as significant as Shree’s. It wasn’t a complete rupture. It was a flare-up of a chronic injury that he has had in the past.
It is something we have managed for the last six or seven years, however long I have known TJ. Sometimes it does flare up more than we want. We have strategies even during competitions to try to reduce the inflammation.
At the Asian Indoor Championships, for example, he had a flare-up of the patellar tendon that we were able to settle down quite quickly during the high jump competition.
Unfortunately, at the Commonwealth Games, it didn’t settle down as quickly as we had hoped. It meant he had to pull out of the high jump.
I’m sure everyone saw how devastated he was. Even though his knee was extremely painful, I told him when he came to the side of the field that one of the reasons I was there was to help him if something went wrong and give him the best opportunity to recover.
The biggest difficulty for him at that stage was his belief about whether he would actually be able to come back. The flare-up was significantly worse than what he was used to and he was also a medal contender, so there was a lot going through his mind.
Q: How did he manage to make that mental switch and compete in the decathlon so soon after the setback?
Wayne Lombard: For him to make that switch the next day was incredible. There was still some discomfort, and we consulted Dr Pardiwala and the physiotherapists there to get their input.
It was a step-by-step process, but he obviously had to change his mindset, and he did that so well.
As he has explained in several interviews, he went down a big, dark rabbit hole that evening trying to figure out what his next steps were going to be.
By the time I met him the next day, there was still some uncertainty. Even when we started the rehabilitation process, we were asking what we needed to do, how we were going to approach it and whether it was actually possible.
For him to go from that emotional setback and put in the effort in just 48 hours, then compete in an event like the decathlon, which is physically extremely demanding, was incredible.
He had two events on the first day that put enormous pressure on the patellar tendon. For him to be confident enough to say, ‘I might be in a bit of pain, but I can still try to produce performances that might put me in medal contention’ was mentally incredible.
Q: Multi-event athletes place enormous stress on their bodies. How do you balance pushing their limits while preventing injuries?
Wayne Lombard: It is not about what we do now or then. Someone like TJ has been training for years. It is cumulative volume and cumulative load, and the body starts adapting over time.
TJ has been training for many years and his body has adapted to that volume and intensity.
If you compare the TJ in his first decathlon with the TJ you saw at the Commonwealth Games or even at the Federation Cup in India, they are two different people. He now has the physical resilience and the grit not only to withstand the demands of the sport but also to recover from event to event and day one to day two.
His trajectory has been phenomenal over the last 10 or 11 decathlons.
That doesn’t happen overnight. It has been six, seven, eight years of continuous training and building the resilience and volume required to compete at the highest level in the decathlon.
PV Sindhu’s data-driven resurgence
Q: PV Sindhu’s recent resurgence has been described as a data-driven comeback. What role can sports science play in extending the career of an elite athlete in her 30s?
Wayne Lombard: Sports science has come a long way, and its implementation with pretty much every athlete I work with is important.
The data is there to guide me on what I probably already know and what the coaches already see. It supports some of the things we are seeing on the ground.
With someone like Sindhu, it was important to ensure her training was well defined and the scheduling was done properly.
There has been a lot of discussion about her age, but I think there is too much focus on that. Her body is still in really good shape. She is still hungry to perform and is still enjoying the process of getting ready to perform. She is resilient and gritty, and that is more important to me than any number that her age might show.
Q: How is data helping you understand what Sindhu needs at this stage of her career?
Wayne Lombard: We collect IMU data from her on court, so we know exactly what her outputs are. We can understand what she requires to compete at the highest level from an external-load perspective and then match that in training.
The objective is to ensure that by the time we get to competition, she is resilient enough to withstand those demands.
Every competition since I came back into the mix around October last year, after she had a foot injury that required rehabilitation, has been a little bit better.
The data helps me understand how she is adapting to the process and whether we are on the right track. It also gives the coach additional feedback.
At the level Sindhu is training and playing at now, she probably doesn’t need to do as much badminton on-court work as younger players. She has been there and done that. She knows how to play badminton.
The role of sports science is to keep her as fresh, fit and healthy as possible so she can train as the coach needs her to, play competition after competition and perform.
Q: What kind of data do you track to understand her readiness and recovery?
Wayne Lombard: We look at various pieces of data, from sleep to heart rate, heart-rate recovery and heart-rate variability. That helps me understand physiologically how she is adapting to the demands we are placing her under.
It also allows us to understand how much we can push her. Ultimately, we want her to be better than she has been in the past, but if I don’t understand how she is adapting, it is very difficult to push her further.
We need to understand the demands of the sport, the training volume, external load and internal load, and how the athlete is responding to that load.
If we don’t understand that whole ecosystem, it is very difficult to make inferences about whether an athlete is going to perform.
Sindhu has trusted the process and bought into it. We have seen a gradual increase in performance over the last 10 months or so.
The biggest win for us is that, touch wood, she has been injury- or niggle-free for the last 10 months. That has allowed her to get better, more confident and more consistent over time.
Sindhu’s fitness ahead of the World Championships
Q: Sindhu has had an injury in the recent past. Do you expect that to affect her performance at the upcoming World Championships?
Wayne Lombard: The easy answer would be no, but unfortunately the human body can always throw curveballs at us, as we saw with TJ.
As we are sitting here talking, she is in great shape. I have no worries that the injury will be a concern for us.
Obviously, we have to prepare for any curveballs that might be thrown at us. That is why she has a good team around her. We have myself, Shreyasi, who is the strength and conditioning coach, and Heera, the physiotherapist.
I oversee the whole performance side of things to ensure that, as a team, if anything goes wrong, we can adjust to it or make plans to hopefully negate any associated risk.
We have put everything in place and, at the moment, everything looks good. But sport can be cruel sometimes and can throw some pretty mean curveballs when we are not expecting them.
The biggest misconception about recovery
Q: What is the biggest misconception athletes have about recovery?
Wayne Lombard: I think the biggest misconception is that all these fancy little devices are the most important things for recovery.
Everyone chases the one-percenters, but the biggest advantage you can get in recovery is your sleep and nutrition.
It sounds cliché, but it is the most important. If you are sleeping well and eating right, 90 per cent of your recovery is taken care of.
Unfortunately, the majority of people are chasing recovery boots, ice baths, saunas and whatever else they prefer, without fixing sleep and nutrition. It becomes almost impossible for the other things to make a difference then.
We need to ensure those two big layers-sleep and nutrition-are taken care of really well.
Nutrition is important because you need to fuel the body for the demands you are placing it under. If you are not fuelling correctly, it becomes difficult to perform.
Sleep is the cornerstone of everything. Everything else is like little sprinkles on top of the cake. They can play a role, but you have to make sure the two fundamental aspects-sleep and nutrition-are taken care of before worrying about ice baths, saunas, recovery boots or any other devices.
Sports science and India’s medal ambitions
Q: Looking ahead to the Asian Games and Olympics, what role do you believe sports science will play in helping Indian athletes win more medals?
Wayne Lombard: It is a difficult question because, from my side, I am obviously a bit biased. I think sports science, strength and conditioning, and sports medicine all play a massive role-not necessarily in winning medals, but in getting athletes into a position where they have a better opportunity to compete at the highest level and perform at their best at the right time.
The rest is up to fate.
I can do everything correctly, or believe I have done everything correctly, and an athlete can be in the best shape they have ever been in, feeling good, and something can still go wrong on the day.
The idea of sports science is to get athletes into the best possible shape to perform as well as possible at the right time. Peaking strategies become really important.
That is why training schedules and periodisation become important. You are ultimately trying to plan to peak at the right time.
If you get that plan right, physically they should be in very good shape. Technically and tactically, you also need to work closely with the coaching staff to ensure the athlete is in the best possible shape.
We want to give our athletes the best chance to perform at the right time by planning, using data and allowing data to inform our decisions-but without making it too ‘sports science’ for the athletes.
The athletes also need to have a say in their programmes and what they feel works for them. They know their bodies very well. We need to take information from wherever we can and make informed decisions with that data, rather than allowing the data to dictate everything we do.
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