Suresh Babu led the Indian athletics team to the 1978 Commonwealth Games at Edmonton in Canada and won a bronze medal for long jump. He then went on to win the gold medal at the 1978 Asian Games in Bangkok, His winning effort of 7.85 metres was far short of T. C. Yohannan's 8.07 metres of the earlier Games. His next target was the 1979 Asian Athletics Meet in Tokyo where he won a silver medal, During his seven years as an active athlete Suresh Babu also won medals for India at competitions in Ceylon, Lahore and the Philippines and was the captain of the Indian team for the World Athletics Meet at Montreal in 1979.