CM Vijay announces ₹30 lakh award for Vithya Ramraj after historic bronze at Asian Games 2026
Vithya Ramraj won bronze in the women’s 400m hurdles at the Asian Games 2026.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, C Joseph Vijay, has announced a ₹30 lakh cash award for hurdler Vithya Ramraj. She won bronze in the women’s 400m hurdles at the Asian Games 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya, clocking 54.75 seconds to set a new national record.
The Chief Minister said the money will be given on behalf of the Tamil Nadu government. In his message, he congratulated Vithya for making Tamil Nadu and India proud.
He added that her victory would inspire and instil confidence among the state’s youth and women. He also noted that PT Usha’s national record, set in 1984, had finally been broken after 42 years.
Vithya, from Coimbatore, also improved her personal best with this performance. Usha set the previous national record of 55.42 seconds at the Los Angeles Olympics on August 8, 1984. Vithya had equalled that mark at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games before surpassing it with her latest effort.
How did Vithya Ramraj rewrite the record?
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Her 54.75 seconds took 0.67 seconds off the old record. It was also her second medal at these Games. India’s Anu Raghavan finished fifth in the same final in 55.88 seconds, a personal best for her too.
Vithya has been on the podium before. At Hangzhou, she won three medals: bronze in the 400m hurdles and silver in both the women’s 4x400m relay and the mixed 4x400m relay.
She ran in the 4x400m relay at the Paris 2024 Olympics and won bronze in the 400m hurdles at the 2025 Asian Athletics Championships in Gumi, South Korea.
Vithya Ramraj’s journey
Her journey began in a modest home. Her father is a truck driver. Her mother enrolled Vithya and her twin sister Nithya, a 110m hurdler, at the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu hostel in Erode, because the family could not afford the expenses.
The sisters later became the first pair of twins to represent India at the Asian Games.
How much reward did Tamil Nadu CM Vijay announce for Vithya Ramraj?
Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay announced a ₹30 lakh cash reward for Vithya Ramraj.
What national record did Vithya Ramraj break at the Asian Games 2026?
Vithya ran 54.75 seconds in the women’s 400m hurdles final in Aichi-Nagoya. That beat PT Usha’s national record of 55.42 seconds, set at the Los Angeles Olympics on August 8, 1984, by 0.67 seconds.
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