Meet Jyoti Yarraji: A breaker of National Records

The athlete has broken the National Record four times this year.

Jyoti Yarraji broke the National Record four times this year in the 100m hurdles and has been one of the most improved athletes from India. Jyoti comes from a humble background in Andhra Pradesh. The 23-year-old first came into the reckoning by winning the gold medal at an inter-district meet and was an athlete to watch out for at the junior meets. Currently, Yarraji represents Railways at the Nationals.

Prodigy

After a few successful junior seasons, it was time for her to show form in the senior section as well. In 2019, Jyoti Yarraji joined the Odisha Athletics High-Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar and is trained by a British coach James Hillier. James specialized in the 400m hurdles in his playing days and had a good career.

Reliance along with the support of the Odisha government set up the high-performance centre where they are training many young athletes like Graceson Jeeva.

Soon a year later Jyoti Yarraji won the gold medal in the 2020 Khelo India University Games held in Bhubaneshwar. Her career took a slight dip due to Covid-19 along with a back injury in the same year. At the start, she found it difficult to practise after the rehabilitation but showed progress going further.

Comeback

After her comeback from injuries, there was no looking back and started creating National Records. Since the start of the 2020 season, Jyoti Yarriji has broken her National Record four times and has also dipped her timing under 12 sec which is considered to be a world standard timing.

Tournament	Timing	Reading
Federation Cup	13.09 s	+2.1 m/s
Limassol International	13.23 s	-0.1 m/s
Loughborough International	13.11 s	+0.3 m/s
Harry Schulting Games	13.04 s	+1.4 m/s
XXII Commonwealth Games	13.18 s	+2.0 m/s
National Games	12.79 s	+2.5 m/s
National Athletic Championships	12.82 s	+0.9m/s

She initially broke the National Record but the timing was not accepted due to the absence of a doping test in the competition. But she did not lose hope and again broke the NR but this time the wind reading was above +2.0 m/s. If the wind reading is above +2.0m/s then the respected timings are not taken into consideration.

Finally, after a couple of attempts, Jyoti broke the NR which was held by Anuradha Biswal (13.38 sec) with a mark of 13.23 sec at Limassol International. With this, the youngster broke the 20-year-old record and created history.

All the above performances are from the 2020 season and breached the National Record recently at the 61st National Athletics Championships with a timing of 12.82 seconds (+0.9m/s) becoming the first Indian to go below the 13-sec barrier. The qualification mark for 100m hurdles is set at 12.78 sec and she missed the mark by 0.4 sec.

A crucial next season

Year	Timing
2016	15.51s
2017	15.62s
2018	14.70s
2019	13.91s
2020	13.03s

The Asian Record for 100m hurdles is in the name of Olga Shishigna from Kazakhstan with a timing of 12.44 sec and if the Indian continues to perform in the same fashion then the record is not far away from being broken.

Jyoti apart from specializing in the 100m hurdles has started taking part in the 100m dash. She won the gold medal at the National Games in the presence of experienced Srabani Nanda and Hima Das. The long strides in the 100m hurdles have helped her perform well in the 100m and in the future, Jyoti has said she might specialize in the 100m sprint too.

The next season will be an important one with the World Athletic Championships to be held in Hungary along with the qualification period starting for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The qualification for World Athletic Championships has already begun and these performances will be taken into consideration to rank the players if they don't achieve the qualification mark.

In the next season, Jyoti Yarraji needs to continue playing higher-grade foreign meets to participate with world-class athletes and get valuable experience.