Jyothi Yarraji clinches India’s first gold medal at the 2023 Asian Athletics Championships, here is all you need to know about the country’s rising star, know his age, height and coach
On Thursday, Jyothi Yarraji won the first gold medal for India at the 25th Asian Athletics Championship in Bangkok.
Jyothi Yarraji biography, age, height, family, coach, state, athletics record
Jyothi won the gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles event despite the rainy final, clocking a time of 13.09 seconds. She had previously won the heats with the fastest time of 12.98 seconds, which was her sixth sub-13s run of the year.
After Abhishek Pal’s bronze in the 10,000-meter race a day prior, this was India’s second medal of the competition. However, Jyothi’s gold medal sparked a medal shower that included two further gold medals won by Ajay Kumar Saroj (1500-meter) and Abdulla Aboobacker (Triple Jump).
COUNTRY
India
BORN
28 AUG 1999
AGE
23
Fast forward to 2023, she now trains under Reliance Foundation Coach James Hillier with the country’s finest athletes. While her current height isn’t known, she had a height of 5 feet 5 inches aged 16.
🎥 Jyothi Yarraji hurdles her way to gold 🥇 🏃🏻♀🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/PdyUrb6V5z
— Odisha Sports (@sports_odisha) July 13, 2023
This is not just India’s first medal at the current Asian Athletics Championships, but it is also the nation’s first gold medal ever in the 100-meter hurdles event across all competitions. Jyothi, who just won the title of Asian champion, also earned significant ranking points that would aid in her bid to compete in the Budapest World Championships.
Jyothi Yarraji, who is just in her early 20s, is now India’s fastest woman in the 100-meter hurdles. Jyothi Yarraji, an Andhra Pradesh native born on August 28, 1999, grew up in a low-income household like many other current and former athletes in India. Her mother, Kumari, is a domestic helper who works part-time as a cleaner in a city hospital, and her father, Suryanarayana, is a private security guard. They made less than Rs 18,000 ($220) monthly in total.
But Jyothi was destined for greater things, and while she was attending Vizag’s Port High School Krishna. She was determined to become a hurdler since her physical education teacher thought she was tall enough to do so. She took up athletics largely as a means of taking care of her parents. She also studied BA History at the Acharya Nagarjuna University.
Jyothi told The New Indian Express:
I want to be able to take care of my family on my own.”
Jyothi routinely took home medals in junior and senior national competitions, despite the fact that she didn’t blow everyone away. After working for two years at the Hyderabad SAI Centre, she was given the chance to join the Guntur Centre of Excellence, but it was abruptly shut down. Jyothi relocated her base of operations to the Odisha Reliance Athletics High-Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar in 2019. It was there that she was influenced by British coach James Hillier.
With a time of 13.03 seconds, Jyothi Yarraji won the gold medal at the All India Inter-University Athletics Meet in Moodabidri, Karnataka, in January 2020, demonstrating how swiftly she improved under James Hillier. She now holds the Indian women’s 100-meter hurdles national record, although the performance was not recognised by the official record books. This was due to the fact that neither the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) nor the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) had tested her prior to the competition, which was required in order to record an official clocking. Later, in February 2020, she went on to win another gold at the Khelo India University Games.
Jyothi Yarraji was scheduled to compete in her first international competition at the South Asian Youth Games later in the year, but the COVID-19 outbreak ruined her plans. Jyothi Yarraji had to wait until beyond 2020 to make her international debut because other competitions including the Indoor Asiad and the World University Games were also postponed.
In order to regain Jyothi Yarraji’s self-assurance and physical stamina, James Hillier and his team had to be very patient and persistent. But when she got back to work, she was even more impressive. Jyothi Yarraji gradually gained momentum in 2022 after missing practically the whole 2021 season. The young woman’s timings improved after starting off in the 13.7-second range at the All India Inter University Meet in Bhubaneswar.
Jyothi Yarraji achievements and personal best
- National record in women’s 100m hurdles – 12.82s
- Broke the women’s 100m hurdles national record after 20 years
- Personal best – 12.79s (not recognised as national record)