Paris 2024: Hurdler Jyothi Yarraji confident of debut Olympics ‘going well’

When Jyothi Yarraji leaps past each hurdle in her bid to reach the finish line, it feels like she is trying to put behind all the struggles that her mother Kumari underwent while working in double shifts as a domestic help and a cleaner at a local hospital in Visakhapatnam.

It is her gutsy mother’s positive mindset while struggling for sustenance that Yarraji would like to carry when she gets on the starting blocks of her 100m hurdles heats during the Paris Olympics.

Yarraji will become the first Indian to compete in the Olympics 100m hurdles event as she made it to the Paris Games through the world ranking quota.

ALSO READ | Indian female athletes at the Olympic Games: India’s first woman Olympian, full list of medallists

“In the past, I did too much thinking, too much worried because of my family, my personal life and my background but I learnt a lot,” Yarraji said at a virtual media interaction facilitated by Reliance Foundation.

“My situation is really bad sometimes. My mom always told me to just keep going forward because we can’t stop the present, past and the future. She told me, ‘You work for yourself, whatever the result, it will come, we will take it’. My mom will never tell me before a competition to win a medal, to win a gold. She will tell me to go and be healthy and be self-satisfied with whatever I am doing. That is why I always go forward with a positive mindset.”

She said that having people with a positive mindest has also helped her as she tried to “improve my present, without thinking too much of the past and future”.

“In the past, there was no great team around me. Now I have lots of positive people, a team of great mentality around me. That is helping me a lot. I always take the positivity with me. I try to change the negative thought into positive one,” she said, referring to her support system, led by her coach James Hillier, who is also the Athletics Director at Reliance Foundation.

Yarraji, who holds the national record of 12.78 seconds, admitted that there will be pressure during her debut Olympics but she is trying to remain calm and focused by doing meditation.

“I don’t have experience of (competing in the) Olympics but I am confident that it will go well. I have experience of Asian Championships, Asian Games and World Championships and I hope to take my plus points from there to the Olympics. It will be a tough and intense competition in Paris. There will be pressure but I will try to concentrate on my race so that I can reproduce what I had done in the training. I am now focusing more on recovery and meditation so that I remain calm and focused,” she said.