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Jyothi overcomes a big hurdle with new national mark
Jyothi broke her own national 100m hurdles record for the fourth time this year, improving on the 13.04s she ran in Netherlands in May by clocking 12.82 secs at the Open nationals
Two weeks earlier, Jyothi Yarraji had suffered the heartache of an illegal tailwind depriving her of an official sub-13 run in the women’s 100m hurdles. The Telengana athlete though achieved it again, clocking 12.82secs to win the title at the National Open Athletics Championships in Bengaluru on Monday. Most importantly, a legal tailwind of 0.9m/s means it will be ratified as a national record in due course.
The most improved woman athlete of India this season, Jyothi broke her own national record for the fourth time this year, improving on the 13.04s she ran in Netherlands in May.
“I am happy with my consistency. My focus was always to improve and I knew timings will take care of themselves. It gives me a lot of confidence to end such a busy season with a sub-13s time,” she said.
Jyothi’s first sub-13s run was at the National Games on Oct 4 when she followed her 100m win by clocking 12.79secs, but an illegal tailwind of 2.5m/secs—2m/secs is the permissible limit—meant it won’t be considered a national mark.
It was the third time that an extraneous factor had played spoilsport. The 23-year-old from Visakhapatnam had twice bettered Anuradha Biswal’s 20-year-old national record of 13.38secs, but they were not ratified. While the 13.03 secs she clocked at the All India Inter-University meet in Moodbidri, Karnataka did not have National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) testers or a federation technical delegate as needed, her 13.09secs at the Kozhikode Federation Cup had a tailwind of 2.1m/s.
Jyothi has now gone under Biswal’s mark 12 times in seven months. Her rapid improvement makes her a strong medal prospect at the 2023 Asian Championships and Asian Games. The qualifying mark for the 2023 Budapest World Championships is 12.78s. The deadline to achieve it is July 30.
Her coach James Hillier at the Reliance Foundation High-Performance Centre is confident she will make the grade. “I am sure she will. It's important she goes to such world-class events and learns from the top athletes," he said.
“It was a great race because the conditions were not great. It was cold, had rained earlier, and the air was heavy. It's indeed a special effort.”
Jyothi heads into a two-week break following which Hillier will put her through an off-season regimen. “We plan to start training in mid-November and head into competitions around Jan-Feb. We'll also plan some overseas training camps, but for now, she deserves a proper break. I have never seen her more drained—emotionally and physically—ever,” Hillier said.
