Jyothi Yarraji: Difference between revisions

Women Indian hurdler

Jyothi Yarraji (born 28 August 1999) is an Indian track and field athlete who specializes in 100 m hurdles. She is the national record holder in 100 m hurdles. Yarraji is a two-time Asian champion, having won gold medals in the 100m hurdles at the 2023 and 2025 editions of the Asian Championships.^[1] She also won a silver medal in the 100m hurdles at the 2022 Asian Games.^[2] She is the first Indian woman to compete in the 100 m hurdles at the Olympics, representing India at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Jyothi was born in a middle class family on 28 August 1999 in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India.^[3] Her father Suryanarayana is a security guard and her mother works as a domestic help. She did her schooling at the Port High School in Visakhapatnam. She did her undergraduation from a college affiliated to Acharya Nagarjuna University.^[3]

Later, she joined the Sports Authority of India hostel in Hyderabad and trained for two years under coach Olympian N Ramesh, who also received the Dronacharya Award.^[3] Later, she moved to Guntur to join the Centre of Excellence. From 2019 onwards, she has been training under British coach James Hillier at the Reliance Athletics High-Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar.^[3]

COVID-19 and her back injury saw that she took part in virtually no events in 2021, but she came back strongly in 2022. She represented India at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the 100 m hurdles and was a part of the Indian 4 x 100 m relay team that came fourth in the finals. At the 2022 edition of India’s National Games, she won the Gold in both 100 metres and 100 metres hurdles.^[4] On 17 October 2022, she became the first Indian woman hurdler to clock below 13 seconds becoming the second best Asian in the 100 metres women’s hurdles in the year and the 11th best Asian ever.^[5] At the 2022 Indian Open Nationals, she was adjudged the best athlete among women.^[6]

Jyothi’s career highlight came when she won the silver medal in the 100m hurdles in the 2022 Asian Games.^[7] Initially she was disqualified for a false start along with a Chinese athlete but was later allowed take the start. In the end after a review, Chinese athlete Wu Yanni was disqualified and the Indian promoted to silver medal.^[7][8] In early 2023, she broke the national record for indoor 60 metres hurdles five times, apart from winning the Silver in the 2023 Asian Indoor Championships.^[9]

In June 2025 she was in Taipei where she won one of six gold medals taken by Indian athletes at the Taiwan open.^[10] In July 2025, Yarraji suffered a knee injury during training and underwent ACL surgery, ruling her out of the 2025 World Championships and the remainder of the season.^[11]