Record-breaking Jyothi Yarraji does not want to get carried away after memorable debut

Jyothi Yarraji does not want to get carried away by the achievement and the accolades around it. Instead, she is ready to put in the hard yards to bring laurels for the country. The 22-year-old Jyothi smashed the 100m hurdles national record at the Cyprus International Meet at Limassol on Tuesday, clocking 13.23 seconds to better the old record of 13.38s, which stood in the name of Anuradha Biswal since 2002.

The Andhra athlete, who is a trainee at the Reliance Foundation Odisha Athletics High Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar, had a bad start but went on to win the race in an impressive time. Jyothi had the worst start among the seven competitors as she came out of the starting block in 0.243 seconds. She was behind local runner Natalia Christofi till the seventh hurdles, but surged ahead after the eighth to win the race. "It was a good time though I did not have the best of starts. I will learn as I compete more. It was a great experience running my first international race but don't want to think too much about this," Jyothi told PTI while returning from Cyprus to her training base. Jyothi comes from a humble background as her father Suryanarayana is working as a private security guard and her mother is a house maid in Visakhapatnam. "Dream of every athlete is to represent India and win a gold medal. I am ready to work hard to bring laurels for the country," she said, adding that the hardships she faced early in her career due to financial problems of her family made her more determined to perform. "I was running my first race outside India, my first international race, but I was not nervous, I was all right and focussing on the race. "I was not thinking of blindly coming out of the starting block. I was thinking of