Paris: Asian Games silver medallist Jyothi Yarraji’s Paris Olympics campaign came to end after she finished 16th in the women’s 100m hurdles repechage round, here on Thursday.
Yarraji clocked 13.17s. to be placed fourth in her heat, behind South Africa’s Marione Fourie (12.79), Netherlands’ Maayke Tjin-A-Lim (12.87), Viktoria Froster of Slovakia (12.88).
Only the top two hurdlers in each repechage heat advanced to the semifinals. There were a total of three heats and Yarraji was placed in heat 1.
Yarraji, an Asian champion, clocked 13.16s in the first round to rank 35th overall and make the repechage round.
In the women’s-only 100m hurdles, Yarraji holds the Indian record with a timing of 12.78 seconds. She first broke the women’s 100m hurdles national record after clocking 13.23s in Cyprus in May 2022 and has improved it several times since then. The current record stands at 12.78s which she achieved in Chengdu, China in August 2023.
The 24-year-old hurdler then matched it at the Motonet GP Jyvaskyla athletics meet in Finland in May 2024, where she missed Paris Olympics qualification mark by just 0.01 seconds.
Though, Yarraji had failed to meet the direct entry standard of 12.77s by a whisker she qualified for the Paris Games on the basis of her ranking. The Indian hurdler was ranked 34th by the cutoff period with the top 40 athletes making it to the Summer Games.
–IANS