Vithya Ramraj Breaks Her Own Share of a Record That Once Belonged to P.T. Usha

Vithya Ramraj won bronze in the women's 400m hurdles at the Asian Games on Monday, running 54.75 seconds to set a new Indian national record — one that used to belong to P.T. Usha alone, and which Ramraj herself had a share of.

The record traces back to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where Usha ran 55.42 and finished fourth, missing a medal by one hundredth of a second in one of the most-told stories in Indian athletics. Nobody in India ran faster for the next 39 years. Then, at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou (held in 2023), Ramraj matched that exact time in her heat, making her a joint record holder with Usha. On Monday, she went past it alone, taking more than half a second off the mark that had stood for over four decades.

The final itself went to the UAE's Mariam Kareem, who won gold in a Games record 54.31, with Kazakhstan's Adelina Zems taking silver in 54.58 — a personal best. Ramraj's bronze came in a photo-finish kind of race at the front, with all three medallists inside a stride of the previous joint record.

It's Ramraj's fifth Asian Games medal. The 28-year-old from Coimbatore, who competes for Indian Railways, already had a 400m hurdles bronze and two relay silvers from Hangzhou, and added a mixed 4x400m relay silver here in Aichi-Nagoya just two days before this run.

The Athletics Federation of India marked the moment on its own account: "After 42 years there's a new name at the top of India's record books, and a medal to go with it."