India’s team for the Paris Olympics 2024 has been announced, featuring many athletes, including Neeraj Chopra. Among them is track and field athlete Jyothi Yarraji. Let’s learn more about her.
Jyothi Yarraji, born on August 28, 1999, is an Indian track and field athlete from Andhra Pradesh. She specializes in the 100m hurdles and holds the Indian national record. On May 10, 2022, she broke Anuradha Biswal’s long-standing record with a time of 13.23 seconds and has since broken her own record multiple times.
Jyothi Yarraji is from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Her father, Suryanarayana, works as a security guard, and her mother, Kumari, is a domestic helper who also works part-time as a cleaner in a city hospital. Jyothi attended Port High School in Visakhapatnam and went to college at an institution affiliated with Acharya Nagarjuna University. She later joined the Sports Authority of India’s hostel in Hyderabad and trained for two years under coach Olympian N Ramesh, a Dronacharya Award recipient. She then moved to Guntur to join the Centre of Excellence.
The highlight of Jyothi’s career came when she won a silver medal in the 100m hurdles at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. Initially, she was disqualified for a false start along with a Chinese athlete but was later allowed to compete. After a review, Chinese athlete Wu Yanni was disqualified, and Jyothi was awarded the silver medal. In early 2023, she broke the national record for the indoor 60m hurdles five times and won a silver medal at the 2023 Asian Indoor Athletics Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan.
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