Hurdles of Life: Jyothi aims big at her debut Olympics

NEW DELHI: When Jyothi Yarraji leaps past each hurdle in her bid to reach the finish line, it feels like she is trying to put behind all the struggles that her mother Kumari underwent while working in double shifts as a domestic help and a cleaner at a local hospital in Visakhapatnam.

It is her gutsy mother's positive mindset while struggling for sustenance that Yarraji would like to carry when she gets on the starting blocks of her 100m hurdles heats during the Paris Olympics.

Yarraji will become the first Indian to compete in the Olympics 100m hurdle as she made it to the Paris Games through world ranking quota.

"In the past, I did too much thinking, too much worried because of my family, my personal life and my background but I learnt a lot,' Yarraji said at a virtual media interaction.

"My situation is really bad sometimes. My mom always told me to just keep going forward because we can't stop the present, past and the future,"

"She told me 'You work for yourself, whatever the result is, we’ll take it'. My mom will never tell me before a competition to win a medal, to win a gold. She will tell me to go and be healthy and be self-satisfied with whatever I am doing. That is why I always go forward with a positive mindset."

She also said that having people with a positive mindset also has helped her as she tried to "improve my present, without thinking too much of the past and future".

"In the past, there was no great team around me. Now I have lots of positive people, a team of great mentality around me. That is helping me a lot. I always take positivity with me. I try to change the negative thoughts into positive one," she added.

Yarraji, who holds the national record of 12.78 second, admitted that there will be pressure during her debut Olympics but she is trying to remain calm and focussed by doing meditation.

"I don't have experience of (competing in the) Olympics but I am confident that it will go well. I have experience of Asian Championships, Asian Games and World Championships and I hope to take my plus points from there (Asian Games, Asian and World Championships) to the Olympics.

"It will be a tough and intense competition in Paris. There will be pressure but I will try to concentrate on my race so that I can reproduce what I had done in the training. I am now focussing more on recovery and meditation so that I remain calm and focussed," said Jyothi.