Despite rain and a fumble, Jyothi races to gold in 100 m hurdles event, scripts hory at Asian meet

ON A wet track and in the pouring rain on Thursday, Indian track and field’s big hope Jyothi Yarraji won the country’s first-ever gold in the women’s 100 metre hurdles at the Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok.At the finish line, however, Jyothi looked draught. Her coach James Hillier put it down to her timing — 13.09 seconds on the clock — good enough for first place but not fast enough for the hurdler who has set high standards for herself.Considered a special talent, the 23-year-old is the only woman in India to run sub-13 seconds, that too six times this year alone. In the heats at Bangkok, she had clocked 12.98 seconds.
“I had prepared really well and felt it was my day but it was my bad luck with the rain pouring. I slipped a bit after the seventh hurdle and lost the rhythm so I couldn’t clock a great time. I expected a new personal best today. But I am happy that I won a medal and I am really pleased with my consency,” Jyothi said after the race.
The Andhra hurdler’s journey has been challenging, especially in her initial days when her mother used to work as a hospital cleaner and her father as a security guard.
During her early days, Jyothi’s junior coach N Ramesh helped her with money for bus tickets for the journey to the sports hostel in Hyderabad from home in Visakhapatnam. Senior athlete and Railways employee Karnatapu Sowjanya also helped her financially.
Sowjanya used to work as a ticket collector on the local Secunderabad-Lingampally route. “Lingampally was close to the stadium where she trained so I used to leave an amount with a colleague at the ticket counter. Jyothi would come and collect it after training. When I took up sports my seniors used to pool in money to get me spikes so I wanted to give back. I am glad I helped the right person,” said Sowjanya, who was part of the 4x400m Asian Indoor Championship gold-winning team in 2010.
A far cry from those early days of struggle, Jyothi is now a Target Olympic Podium Scheme athlete and is also supported the Reliance Foundation.
The Asia season leader was the favourite to win the title in Bangkok but the conditions made it tricky for all the hurdlers. Jyothi almost fumbled during the last leg of the race as she lost balance when clearing the seventh of 10 hurdles at the Supachalasai Stadium.
“It wasn’t a clean race but in the end, she won and that matters. She almost slipped on the 7th hurdle but I think that was fine. That was the reason she didn’t seem very happy at the finish line. She could have easily finished 4 to 5 metres ahead of her competitors,” said coach Hillier, athletics director at Reliance Foundation, who has been training Jyothi since 2021.
In October last year, she became the first woman from the country to run below 13 seconds in 100m hurdles – a feat which was considered almost impossible until recently.
Hillier felt the rain in Bangkok turned out to be a blessing for Jyothi. The coach makes sure that practice is never halted because of weather. When sprinter Amalan Borgohain broke the 200m record while it rained in Kozhikode last April, the first thing he told Hiller was: “I broke the record because we trained in the rain.”
“I have grown up in New South Wales where it rains all the time so I was a little surprised to see people halt practice here when it rains. When I first saw this happen, I asked the athletes to come back and train. I stood there drenched in the rain and led example. We have to train and be ready for any possible condition and that is why Jyothi won today,” said the coach.
It was also a proud moment for Jyothi’s junior coach Ramesh, who first spotted the talent in the youngster when he inducted the teenager to Sports Authority of India Hostel back in 2016. Although in the initial years, Jyothi did not show much potential of sprinting to the top, Ramesh backed her.
“She had good height and could grasp things quickly. She also had this fighting spirit in her and this unique ability to be calm even when things didn’t go her way. That is the reason I backed her. I was the one who chose the hurdles event for her,” said Ramesh, who is now the chief India junior national coach.
Jyothi’s medal included, India finished with three golds and two bronze medals on the second day of the Asian Championships.
Ajay Kumar Saroj, who won the gold at the 2017 edition held in Bhubaneswar, put up a gritty show to finish on top of the podium in the men’s 1500m event, with 3:41.51s on the clock. Triple jumper Abdulla Aboobacker added another gold to the tally with a best jump of 16.92m after a series of inconsent shows in the run-up to the Asian event. High jump Commonwealth Games medall Tejaswin Shankar (7,527 pts), taking part in his first international decathlon event, won the bronze and so did 400m runner Aishwarya Mishra.