When Jyothi Yarraji overcomes every obstacle in her attempt to reach the finish line, it seems like she is trying to leave behind all the struggles her mother Kumari faced while working double shifts as a maid and cleaner at a local hospital in Visakhapatnam. It’s the positive mindset of her courageous mother as she fights for her livelihood that Yarraji would like to carry when she reaches the start of her 100m hurdles heats during the Paris Olympics.
Yarraji will become the first Indian woman to compete in the 100m hurdles at the Olympics when she reaches the Paris Games through the world ranking quota.
“In the past, I thought a lot, I was very worried because of my family, my personal life and my background, but I learned a lot,” Yarraji said in a virtual media interaction facilitated by Reliance Foundation.
“My situation is sometimes very bad. My mother always told me to move forward because we cannot stop the present, the past and the future.
“She told me, ‘You’re self-employed, whatever result is going to happen… we’re going to accept it’. My mother will never tell me before a competition to win a medal, to win a gold. She will telling me to go and be healthy and be satisfied with everything I’m doing. That’s why I always move forward with a positive mindset.”
She also said that having people with a positive mindset also helped her in trying to “improve my present, without thinking too much about the past and the future”.
“In the past there wasn’t a big team around me. Now I have a lot of positive people, a great team. ” she said, referring to her support system led by her coach James Hillier, who is also the Reliance Foundation’s director of athletics.
“I had a lot of injuries, a lot of hits on obstacles, a lot of falls. I received less, but I try to turn that into a positive. I strongly believe that if I make a mistake (can’t do well) at this Olympics, after the next four years, I don’t know what I will do , I just want to take advantage of the present opportunity and be the best version of myself.
Yarraji, who holds the national record of 12.78 seconds, admitted there will be pressure during her Olympic debut but she is trying to stay calm and focused by doing meditation.
“I have no experience in (competing in) the Olympics, but I am confident that everything will go well. I have experience in Asian Championships, Asian Games and World Championships and I hope to take my positives from there (Asian Games, Asian and World Championships) at Olympics.
“It will be a tough and intense competition in Paris. There will be pressure, but I will try to focus on the race so that I can replicate what I did in training. Now I am focusing more on recovery and meditation to stay calm and focused,” said the Reliance athlete Foundation.
Asked if she has any goals regarding her timing in Paris, she said: “I want to improve step by step. It’s not about my timing. If we focus completely on timing, we can get stuck in one place and can’t move forward. It’s all about the process; how we’re doing and how we’re improving every day.
“If I do something wrong, I’ll cry, take the pain away and start again. That’s it.”
I was scared after getting injured in Finland
Yarraji admitted she was a little scared when she suffered a hip flexor injury while competing in Finland in May.
“It was not good to have an injury as the Olympics approached. I worked on meditation, breathing and concentration. It was step by step (to get out of the injury).
“But I made a good comeback at the National Interstate Championships in June. The injury was actually a good experience for me in my life; whatever obstacles I have to overcome.”
Speaking further about the injury, she said: “I was competing continuously. When we are in India, we have proper food at the right time, we have our masseuse and team, we have everything. a lot of things, we have to manage everything, food, travel, etc.
“All these things affect us, but we still have to manage and perform. No one knows what we are up against and people just want to see the results. We have to perform consistently and to do that we always push our limits. In the process, I suffered the injury.”
Yarraji in best form ever: Hillier
“She’s in the best shape I’ve ever seen, physically and mentally. She can run significantly faster than her best time. She’s done that in training. She wants to run under 12.70 seconds,” Hillier said, adding that the injury she suffered in May was “oddly a good thing”.
“We’re fundamentally working on three main things: speed, working to break her rhythm and rebuild it as quickly as possible, and making her run so fast that she feels out of control of her body, the body is open to just being out of control.”
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