Reigning Asian champion Jyothi Yarraji clinched gold in her first race of the season, that too with a national record, winning the 60m hurdles event by clocking 8.04 seconds at the Elite Indoor Meeting in Nantes, France.
The 25-year-old Yarraji, in fact, broke her own earlier national record of 8.12 seconds twice in a matter of few hours on Saturday.
She first clocked 8.07 seconds in the heats and then bettered her time in the final at the Stadium Pierre-Quinon in the World Athletics Indoor Tour bronze level meet.
Her timing is, however, still short of the qualifying mark of 7.94 seconds for the World Indoor Championships to be held in Nanjing, China in March.
Yarraji, who was recently conferred with the Arjuna Award, had won 60m gold in the Asian Indoor Championships in 2024 with a time of 8.12 seconds in Tehran, Iran.
She also holds the national outdoor 100m hurdles record of 12.78 seconds. She is the reigning 100m hurdles Asian champion and won a silver medal in the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023 with a time of 12.91 seconds.
Meanwhile, in the men's 60m hurdles event, Tejas Shirse won a bronze with a time of 7.68 seconds.
This was Shirse's second race of the season. On January 19, he had set a national record time of 7.65 seconds at the CMCM Indoor Meeting in Luxembourg. The previous national record in the event was 7.70 seconds, which was set by Siddhanth Thingalaya in 2017.
The 22-year-old Shirse is also the national record holder in 110m hurdles with a time of 13.41 seconds.
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