Wishing Jyoti Yarraji Gold in Asian Games 2023

Mark your calendar – Sunday 1^st Oct 2023, remember to watch Women’s 100m hurdles at Asian Games 2023.   .. .. and can you identify this Sports person ??

 

        The event evolved from wooden barriers being placed along a 100 yard stretch, in England during the 1830s. The inaugural Women’s World Games of 1922 featured the 100m hurdles, and a slightly truncated event made its first Olympic appearance over the 80m distance in 1932. The distance was increased to 100m at the 1972 Olympics.  

        Athletes run in lanes and start from blocks, negotiating 10 hurdles of 2ft 9in (83.8cm) over a distance of 100m.      A reaction time – measured by sensors in the starting pistol and on the blocks – of less than 0.1 is deemed a false start and runners will be recalled, with the responsible athlete disqualified.  

The 100 metres hurdles,  is a track and field event run mainly by women (the male counterpart is the 110 metres hurdles). For the race, ten hurdles of a height of 33 inches (83.8 cm) are placed along a straight course of 100 metres (109.36 yd). The first hurdle is placed after a run-up of 13 metres from the starting line. The next 9 hurdles are set at a distance of 8.5 metres from each other, and the home stretch from the last hurdle to the finish line is 10.5 metres long. The hurdles are set up so that they will fall over if bumped into by the runner, but weighted so this is disadvantageous. Fallen hurdles do not count against runners provided that they do not run into them on purpose. Like the 100 metres sprint, the 100 m hurdles begins with athletes in starting blocks.  

A 655-member Indian contingent is competing at the Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou, the People’s Republic of China. The 19th edition of the continental multisport event officially began on September 23 and will conclude on October 8.  A total of 48 sets of medals in track and field athletics are on offer at the 19th Asian Games Hangzhou taking place in 2023.  

The likes of Olympic champions Mutaz Essa Barshim, Neeraj Chopra, Gong Lijiao, and Liu Shiying will be in action  with competitions taking place at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Stadium and the Smart New World Qiantang River Green Belt. 

At the last edition, Jakarta 2018, a 570-strong Indian squad racked up a best-ever Asian Games haul of 70 medals - 16 gold, 23 silver and 31 bronze. With an increase in the contingent strength, a bump in the medals count is also expected. Over the years, athletics have accounted for the majority of India’s medals at the Asian Games - 254 from a total of 672. Track and field events will once again be the focus at Hangzhou 2023 with India fielding 68 athletes - the country’s largest contingent in any sport. 

The Indian athletics squad in Hangzhou features top names like men’s javelin throw ace Neeraj Chopra, the reigning world, Olympic and Asian Games champion, Commonwealth Games men’s 3000m steeplechase silver medallist Avinash Sable and women’s hurdles sensation Jyothi Yarraji.  By now you have read in detail the success of Indian Womens Team in Cricket.   

 

Jyothi Yarraji, the national record holder in women’s 100m hurdles, is making  her Asian Games debut in Hangzhou. She is the first Indian woman to run sub-13 seconds in the event.  This season, the 24-year-old from Visakhapatnam won gold medal at the Asian Athletics Championships in Bangkok. She also clinched silver at the same tournament in the 200m event and will be in action in both categories in China too. 

She was born in Aug 1999, in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Her father, Suryanarayana, works as a private security guard while her mother, Kumari, is a domestic help who works part-time as a cleaner in a city hospital 

The  Sports person featured at the start is – Valsamma.  Manathoor Devasia Valsamma became  the second Indian woman to win an individual gold medal at the Asian Games and the first to win it on Indian soil. Valsamma won the gold medal in the 400 m hurdles in an Indian and Asian record time of 58.47 seconds in front of a home crowd at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in the 1982 Asian Games. This made her the second woman athlete to win an Asian Games gold for India, after Kamaljit Sandhu (400 metres-1974). She later figured in a silver medal-winning 4 X 400 metres relay team.  She was  conferred with  Arjuna Award in 1982 and the Padma Shri in 1983.

Wishing Jyoti all success for winning a Gold at Asian Games 2023

 
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
26.9.2023