Jyothi Yarraji becomes first Indian woman hurdler to run sub-13s; breaks national record again

Indian athlete Jyothi Yarraji on Monday became the first woman hurdler to finish the 100m women’s hurdles race with a sub-13 timing as she clocked 12.82s at the 61st National Open Athletics Championship in Bengaluru. She broke her own national record, set earlier this year. Jyothi had legal wind assistance during the race; however, all records are subject to ratification.

Jyothi has been in stellar form this year as she has finished with sub-13 timings twice. But her first attempt at setting a new national record was spoiled by wind reading. Yarraji had broken the 13 seconds barrier during the National Games earlier this month, but the wind reading back then was above the permissible limit of +2m/s. She had clocked 12.79s then in Gandhinagar. 

Now, with a timing of 12.82s, Jyothi finds herself amongst the top 10 fastest in Asian athletics history. This timing would have also given her a seventh-place finish at both the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games – a tournament where her timing of 13.18s put her tenth overall after the heats. Nevertheless, the Andhra Pradesh athlete is now the national record holder. 

Yarraji first broke the 20-year-old national record of 13.38s set by Anuradha Biswal in 2002 in May this year at the Limassol International, Cyprus. She bettered her own record twice in the next 16 days as she recorded the timings of 13.11s and 13.04s at the Loughborough International and the Harry Schulting Games respectively. 

The 22-year-old was in the 10th class when she first thought of becoming an athlete. At that time, it was a ludicrous ambition for a poor girl in Vishakhapatnam. At least that’s what she thought at that time. 

“My father is a security guard and my mother is a cleaner in hospitals. I’d always been told the path to come out of that was through studies. When it came to sports, I had no knowledge of how to start. That’s why I started only in Class 10. I got into it only because my physical education teacher told me I should try it out,” she had told Sportstar earlier this year.