Hyderabad: Two Telugu athletes—one every from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh—have made it to the distinguished listing of Nationwide Sports activities Awards introduced by the Union authorities. The 2 Telugu athletes have been among the many recipients of the distinguished Arjuna Award.
Para-athlete Jivanji Deepthi from Warangal district and Runner Jyothi Yerraji, hailing from Visakhapatnam, have each been celebrated for his or her excellent achievements within the realm of sports activities.
Deepthi made historical past at Paris 2024, changing into the primary intellectually impaired Indian athlete to win a Paralympic medal with a bronze within the ladies’s 400m T20 class on Tuesday.
The 20-year-old Indian para-athlete completed the race in 55.82 seconds, behind Ukraine’s Yulia Shuliar and Turkiye’s Ayser Onder, who crossed the road in 55.16s and 55.23s, respectively.
The T20 class is reserved for athletes with mental impairments. Deepthi, India’s first-ever athlete on this class to compete on the Paralympic Video games, faces cognitive challenges that have an effect on her communication and understanding expertise.
Born in a small village in Telangana, Deepthi confronted important challenges early in life. Villagers urged her mother and father to desert her as a consequence of her options however regardless of monetary hardships, Deepthi’s mother and father stood by her by means of thick and skinny.
Alternatively, Jyothi who’s in her early 20s, is presently the quickest Indian within the ladies’s 100m hurdles. Born on August 28, 1999, in Visakhapatnam (Vizag), Andhra Pradesh, Jyothi Yarraji, like many former and up to date Indian athletes, grew up with restricted means.
Her father, Suryanarayana, is a personal safety guard whereas her mom, Kumari, is a home assist who works part-time as a cleaner in a metropolis hospital. Mixed, they earned lower than Rs 18,000 monthly.
Jyothi, nonetheless, was destined for higher issues and she or he was set on that path throughout her days at Vizag’s Port Excessive College. Her bodily schooling instructor felt that she had good top to be a hurdler and there was no wanting again.
She first got here into the highlight in 2015 after profitable the gold medal at an Andhra Pradesh inter-district meet. The next yr, she moved to the SAI Centre in Hyderabad to coach below coach N Ramesh, an Olympian and Dronacharya awardee. Since then, she has been constantly profitable medals in junior and senior nationwide meets. She later joined the Centre of Excellence, Guntur.
As the power bought abruptly closed in 2019, Jyothi moved bases to the Odisha Reliance Athletics Excessive-Efficiency Centre in Bhubaneswar, the place she got here below the affect of British coach James Hillier. In January 2020, she clocked 13.03 seconds to win gold on the All-India Inter-College athletics meet in Moodabidri, Karnataka.
The Indian hurdler, nonetheless, ended the 2022 season with a flurry as she gained gold within the 100m hurdles on the Nationwide Video games with a brand new private better of 12.79s, which made her the primary Indian girl to dip under the 13-second mark in her self-discipline. Sadly, although, it didn’t qualify as a nationwide document because the wind help in the course of the run was +2.5m/s.
