HANGZHOU: Five years ago, he dominated the track at the Jakarta Asian Games winning a gold and silver but defending men's 1500m champion Jinson Johnson came into the 19th edition after a long battle with Covid-19 that had also dashed his hopes to compete in the Tokyo Games.
"I was down with a severe attack of Covid-19 in April 2021. I went back home from the camp and thus I missed the Tokyo Olympics. I had missed the qualification before the pandemic by a whisker and after the lockdown it was impossible to make the cut," Johnson, who also missed the last Commonwealth Games with injury, recalled to TOI. "Once I left the camp my workouts went haywire. My fitness suffered and my body weight increased. It was during this period that people started saying that I had stopped competing."
