When Tejas Shirse steps onto the blue track of the Atlas Arena in Łódź for the 2026 Orlen Cup, he will not just be racing five hurdles over 60 metres.
He will be racing a narrative of recovery from injury, of a ranking system that rewards ambition, and of Indian athletics’ increasingly strategic push into the global indoor circuit. As the reigning Indian national record holder in both the 60m and 110m hurdles, Shirse’s presence at this World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver meet represents a carefully calibrated move designed to convert promise into sustained international relevance.
Why Łódź matters in 2026
The World Athletics Indoor Tour has expanded dramatically in the current Olympic cycle, now featuring close to 80 meetings across Gold, Silver, Bronze and Challenger tiers. For athletes on the cusp of world class, Silver-tier competitions such as the Orlen Cup strike the ideal balance: the fields are deep enough to force peak performance, yet not so overwhelming that the psychological load becomes counterproductive.
Crucially, Silver meets are classified as Category B in the World Athletics ranking system, where a win is worth 100 placing points often equivalent to running significantly faster at a lower-tier meet. For Shirse, who narrowly missed the 2025 World Championships semifinals on ranking position, these points are not abstract; they are the currency of qualification.
Born in 2002, Shirse has already redefined India’s standards in the event. His 110m hurdles national record of 13.41 and his 60m hurdles indoor best of 7.64 have been achieved through a blend of explosive sprinting and unusually clean barrier mechanics skills honed by a gymnastic background that sharpened his core stability and hip mobility.
Over the 2025 indoor season he showed technical consistency, clocking 7.65 in Luxembourg and then 7.64 in Miramas, suggesting that his hurdle rhythm had stabilised at a level India has never seen before.
Yet the indoor numbers tell only part of the story. The 60m hurdles is the most unforgiving sprint-hurdle format: five barriers, tight inter-hurdle spacing and almost no margin for error. Any brush of the hurdle rail disrupts momentum and shatters the three-step rhythm between barriers.
Shirse himself acknowledged how costly even a minor clip can be in races decided by hundredths of a second. His goal in Łódź is therefore not merely speed, but an “error-free” run that keeps his centre of mass low and his lead-leg snap-down brutally efficient.
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The significance of this winter campaign is amplified by what came before it. Shirse’s 2025 outdoor season was marred by a series of soft-tissue problems and a navicular stress reaction in his left foot, a debilitating injury for a hurdler whose event is built on violent foot strikes and rapid ground contacts. He still qualified for the World Championships in Tokyo albeit via ranking rather than the automatic standard but arrived undercooked after visa delays and restricted training windows. The frustration was clear: he believes 13.60 is a time he can run “anytime, anywhere,” yet pain and logistics prevented him from converting potential into performance.
Łódź is therefore the first real diagnostic of his rehabilitation. A fast, injury-free race in Poland would signal that the managed loading and gradual return to intensity have done their job, allowing him to progress to the next two peaks of his indoor season: the Asian Indoor Championships in Tianjin and the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Toruń.
The Orlen Cup has a reputation for speed, not least because Polish star Jakub Szymański set his national record of 7.39 there last year. The 2026 field is again expected to be stacked with European specialists in the 7.50–7.60 range. For Shirse, that depth is an asset. Back home he often runs alone, without domestic rivals to pull him into uncharted territory. In Łódź he will be forced to chase men who can expose any weakness in his drive to the first hurdle or his transition off the fifth. That pressure, coaches believe, is what converts national record holders into international finalists.
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Strategically, Shirse’s season has been divided into three peaks. January’s European races, beginning with Łódź, are about technical refinement and ranking points. Early February’s Asian Indoors are the continental target, where a podium would bring prestige and Category-A points. March’s World Indoors in Toruń are the global test. A sub-7.60 in Poland or France would likely secure him an automatic qualifying mark, removing the uncertainty that haunted his 2025 campaign.
This meticulous periodisation reflects a broader shift in Indian athletics. The Athletics Federation of India has tightened qualification standards and invested in indoor competition, even staging a national indoor championships in Bhubaneswar. With a squad of specialists heading to Tianjin, Shirse’s performances abroad will be a bellwether for how effectively India’s new high-performance structures translate into medals.
Ultimately, the Orlen Cup is not about one finish position. It is about whether Tejas Shirse can finally align his talent, health and opportunity on the same start line.
A clean, aggressive run in Łódź would validate months of rehab and confirm that India’s best hurdler is ready to challenge Asia’s elite again. In a sport where rhythm is everything, that single evening in Poland could set the cadence for his entire 2026 season.
