Manikanta Hoblidhar wins national open 100m in 10.25s in first race since injury

Karnataka sprinter Manikanta Hoblidhar won the men's 100m title at the 65th National Open Athletics Championships at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on Friday, 9 October 2026. He ran 10.25 seconds to defend the title he won last year, despite suffering stomach cramps the night before the race. It was his first and only 100m race of the season: an injury in April kept him out of both the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games this year, and he has been in rehabilitation since then.

The National Open is one of the last big senior meets of the Indian season, and the men's 100m is its headline race. For Hoblidhar, the result is mainly about recovery. After months of rehabilitation and two missed multi-sport Games, he returned for a single race and still won by almost two tenths of a second, a wide gap in sprinting. He said the stomach cramps had cost him a chance at a personal best, which suggests he believes he was in faster shape than the clock showed.

His absence earlier in the year had a cost beyond his own results. Reports from the meet note that India could not field a men's 4x100m relay at the major Games without him, and the relay had been seen as a possible medal chance. That shows how thin India's depth in men's sprinting still is: one injury to the leading runner was enough to remove a whole event from the team's plans.

For young athletes following the sport, the race is also a reminder of how close the margins are near the top. The gap between Hoblidhar's winning time and his own meet record was less than a tenth of a second, while the next two runners were separated by just two hundredths. Small gains in training, health and race preparation decide medals at this level.

The calendar now moves to younger age groups. The Athletics Federation of India lists an Indian Open U23 competition in Jaipur from 16 October and the 41st National Junior Athletics Championships in Chennai from 23 to 27 October, where the next generation of sprinters will try to close the gap on times like these.

Short-term: Hoblidhar's win confirms he is fit to race again and keeps him at the top of the Indian 100m rankings heading into the off-season.

Long-term: A healthy Hoblidhar strengthens India's hopes of rebuilding a competitive men's 4x100m relay for future international meets, though the results also show how much the team relies on one sprinter.

Who is affected: Indian sprinters and relay squads, coaches planning next season, and young athletes heading to the U23 and junior national meets later in October.

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