Kochi, April 24 (H.S.): 26-year-old Olympian Vithya Ramraj from Tamil Nadu established a new meet record in the women's 400-meter hurdles during the 28th National Federation Athletics Championship on Wednesday. She clocked a time of 56.04 seconds, breaking the record that had stood for the last 6 years and maintaining a margin of over 2 seconds ahead of second-placed Anu Raghavan.

Vithya had previously matched P.T. Usha's 41-year-old national record at the Asian Games (55.42 seconds) and now she seems ready to break it. She stated, If the race had been a day later, I would have run under 54 seconds. My goal is to clock 54 seconds this year.

Karnataka's P. Yashas recorded a personal best of 49.32 seconds to win the men's 400-meter hurdles, but missed the qualification mark of 49.19 seconds set for the Asian Championship.

In another corner of the Maharaja Stadium, Punjab's National Games champion Niharika Vashistha won the gold medal by making an impressive jump of 13.49 meters in the final round, narrowly defeating Kerala's Sandra Babu by just 1 cm.

Niharika, who has more than 240,000 followers on Instagram, made her comeback in February 2022 after a two-year doping ban and now appears stronger than ever. She has improved her personal performance by over 40 cm in just one year.

Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar