Athletics: India's star hurdler Jyothi Yarraji suffers ‘freak knee injury', puts season on pause with World Championships looming

Indian Express

4 days ago

Women's 100m hurdles National Record holder Jyothi Yarraji announced on her social media account on Wednesday that she is putting her season on pause after suffering a knee injury in training. The 25-year-old is India's best ever short-distance hurdler, having repeatedly broken the national record and being the first from the country to run the race under 13 seconds. She is currently on track to qualify for the Tokyo World Championships on the basis of world ranking points, but if the knee injury is serious, it appears that the event in Japan from 13 to 21 September would be out of her reach.
Later, PTI reported that the injury is pretty serious in nature, quoting Jyothi's coach, James Hillier. 'Unfortunately, she picked up a freak injury to her knee in training. It's pretty bad so we are assessing our options at the moment,' Hillier said.
'Due to an unfortunate injury to my knee during training a few days back, I've had to put a pause on my season,' Jyothi posted on her Instagram account. 'I'm working with my medical team to assess my options and take a decision on the way forward. Injuries are part of an athlete's journey and I'm viewing this as just another hurdle I'm going to overcome soon with all your support and blessings I'll be back stronger.' Her latest Instagram reel is one that is captioned 'Athlete's life' from three days back, and shows her stumbling on the track in training as well as during a race.
A post shared by Jyothi Yarraji (@jyothi_yarraji_)
Jyothi, who ran a superb race in Gumi earlier this year to be crowned the Asian Champion, is well within the qualifying spots for the World Championships based on her ranking points. Athletes can qualify for the World Championships in two ways — direct entry by breaching the qualification mark or through world ranking quota. The qualification window is till August 24. She holds the national record of 12.78s, and the automatic qualification mark is 12.73s. She had clocked 12.96s on her way to winning gold at the Asian Championships in May.
She won gold in 100m hurdles and 200m race in the Uttarakhand National Games in February, bagged the top spot in the 100m hurdles in the Federation Cup before defending her Asian Championships title. Her last title was in the Taiwan Athletics Open on June 7.
The Asian Championships final in rain-hit Gumi, where the race was delayed by a couple of hours, was Jyothi's first sub-13-second race of the season. She had had minor setbacks in the build-up to the Asian Championships. Plans to compete abroad were hit because of a hamstring injury during training in the first week of April. She also tweaked her technique, reverting to eight strides for more frequency between hurdles after opting for seven last year.
Hillier, the athletics director at Reliance Foundation,had said that there was a genuine hope of her bettering the national record again soon. 'She is in better shape than when she equalled her national record last year. She's stronger and leaner and the body fat percentage is lower than it's ever been,' Hillier had said. But this injury could well prove to be a setback for an athlete who has been constantly seeking to improve her timing in recent years.