India’s Vithya Ramraj on Monday won a bronze medal in the Asian Games women’s 400m hurdles with her personal best of 54.75 seconds, breaking legendary sprinter PT Usha’s more than four-decade-old national record.
28-year-old Vithya from Coimbatore finished third behind Maryam Karim of UAE and Adelina James of Kazakhstan. Maryam won the gold medal with a Games record timing of 54.31 seconds while Adelina won the silver medal with a personal best timing of 54.58 seconds.
Vithya surpassed Usha’s national record of 55.42 seconds set at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Usha is currently the President of the Indian Olympic Association and is here for the Asian Games.
This is Vithya’s second medal in the current Games. Earlier, she was also a part of the Indian team that won a silver medal in the 4×400 meter mixed relay event. India’s Anu Raghavan finished fifth. He achieved his personal best of 55.88 seconds.
Earlier, Commonwealth Games bronze medalist Seema Kaliraman performed a personal best in the women’s discus throw final but finished fourth. Seema threw the discus to a distance of 59.88 meters in her fifth attempt but it was not enough for a medal. The best efforts of all three medal winners were over 60 metres.
