Jyothi breaks two decade old record
HT Correspondent
NEW DELHI: Indian 100m hurdler Jyothi Yarraji bettered a 20-yearold national record as she clocked 13.23s to win the event at the World Athletics Continental Tour—challenger Category D event in Limassol, Cyprus.
The 22-year-old Andhra athlete broke the mark set by Anuradha Biswal in 2002, who had twice clocked 13.38s within a fortnight in New Delhi. Jyothi would be particularly delighted to set the mark in a World Athletics event, after twice bettering the old mark without scope for ratification as a national record.
Jyothi, a trainee at the Odisha Reliance Athletics High Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar, had clocked 13.03s in the 2020 All-india Inter-university Championships in Moodbidri, Karnataka, but the competition was outside the federation’s purview. She clocked 13.09s at the Federation Cup in Kozhikode last month, but that too didn’t count because the tailwind was above the permissible 2m/s (2.1m/s). “The rewriting of national records is evidence of the progress of our athletes across a number of events,” AFI president Adille Sumariwalla said in a statement.
Jyothi’s record comes on the heels of other national records. Annu Rani rewrote her javelin mark an eighth time (63.82m from 63.24m) at the Indian Open Javelin meet in Jamshedpur. Avinash Sable bettered Bahadur Prasad’s 30-year-old 5,000m national mark (13:29.70) clocking 13:25.65 at a World Athletics Continental Tour meet in USA. Amlan Borgohain (men’s 200m) and M Sreeshankar (long jump) also set national records this year that await ratification.
In Cyprus, Lily Das won women’s 1,500m clocking 4:17.79. Borgohain came third in 200m clocking 21.32secs, a dip from the national record of 20.52s he set at Federation Cup.