How Jyothi Yarraji conquered women’s 100m hurdles at Asian Championships yet again?

At least in the initial seconds after the starter’s pistol went off at the start of the women’s 100m hurdles race at the Asian Championships in Gumi Civic Stadium, it didn’t seem that Jyothi Yarraji was going to be able to defend her gold medal from the 2023 edition in Bangkok.

Five hurdles (of the total 10 set up) in, Japan’s Yumi Tanaka and China’s Wu Yanni had a clear lead over the Indian.

By the time she cleared the sixth hurdle, though, it seemed as if the 25-year-old had found an extra gear.

By the ninth hurdle, she had gone level with Wu and cleared the 10th before Tanaka. When Jyothi crossed the finish line and raised her arms in triumph, she was well ahead of the rest of the field, clocking a time of 12.96 seconds – the second-placed athlete was over a 10th of a second behind.

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While the race ended with a championship record, it had started less propitiously. Both Yumi (season’s best 12.88s) and Wu (season’s best 12.96s) had come to the Asian Championships having run faster than Jyothi (13.10s) this season.

The Indian hadn’t even had the best start to the season – she’d picked up a niggle to her hamstring at the start of the year.

The Asian Championships started ominously as a heavy thunderstorm lashed Gumi just before the start of the evening session.

“The race was supposed to start at 8:40 pm (local time), and I had warmed up well also, but then, because of the rain, it was postponed by two hours. By the time it started, it had become very cold,” Jyothi would say after the race.

In those two hours, Jyothi and coach James Hillier found a storage room where they tried their best to stay warmed up while the athlete tried to visualise the race.

“I went through each of the hurdles 10 times before the race,” she says.

It’s the first few hurdles of the race that bother Jyothi the most. In recent months, she and Hillier have experimented with ways to start the race faster.

She’s gone from starting with taking eight strides to reach the first hurdle, then tried to tighten the run up to seven strides and went back to eight strides at the start of the year.

Despite all of it, Yarraji was slow off the blocks and amongst the last to cross the first hurdle. Some of this can’t be helped.

“Jyothi is taller than both the Chinese and Japanese runners. So, they will always start better than her, and they got off to exceptional starts today while she (Jyothi) didn’t,” Hillier says.

But what Hillier also knows is that Jyothi starts finding her race rhythm by the fifth hurdle, and that’s when her race really begins.

“I think she’s one of the best hurdlers in the world in the last three hurdles. I’ve always told her that if you are near the other girls at the eighth hurdle, you will always win,” he says.

That’s what happened on Friday evening.

“When I saw that there was no one next to me after the 10th hurdle, I wanted to shout with happiness,” says Jyothi.

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While she might have a second Asian championship gold in her kitty, both Jyothi and her coach are looking beyond it.

On their minds is 12.73 seconds – the time that should automatically qualify Jyothi for the World Championships.

Jyothi, who holds the current national record of 12.78 seconds, says she might have targeted the World standard at the Asian Championships but for the injury scare early in the season.

Coach Hillier says the version of Jyothi that took the track in Gumi isn’t yet the complete deal.

“This competition is three weeks early. (The) foundation is there. She’s leaner, stronger than she’s ever been. Conditions were difficult here. Her race got delayed, and she wasn’t able to warm up as well as she would have wanted. The track was wet and slow. (Running) Sub-13 in those conditions bodes well for her running 12.73 and qualifying for Worlds,” he says.

In particular, Hillier hopes to iron out the creases at the start of Jyothi’s race.

“She’s run training PBs (personal bests) on flat races (without hurdles) in training. I saw the speed kicking in today, but it didn’t kick in until the fifth or sixth hurdle.

“We are trying to get her to hit her race rhythm a little earlier than that. We need to get her over the first five hurdles. We will be working on her starts. The fundamental qualities are all there, but we want her to develop the feeling of going faster over that first hurdle,” he says.

“She can run significantly faster, and she should get in the 12.60s this year. The rest of the seasons should be really exciting,” Hillier adds.