Hyderabad: Two Telugu athletes—one each from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh—have made it to the prestigious list of National Sports Awards announced by the Union government. The two Telugu athletes were among the recipients of the prestigious Arjuna Award.
Para-athlete Jivanji Deepthi from Warangal district and Runner Jyothi Yerraji, hailing from Visakhapatnam, have both been celebrated for their outstanding achievements in the realm of sports.
Deepthi made history at Paris 2024, becoming the first intellectually impaired Indian athlete to win a Paralympic medal with a bronze in the women’s 400m T20 class on Tuesday.
The 20-year-old Indian para-athlete finished the race in 55.82 seconds, behind Ukraine’s Yulia Shuliar and Turkiye’s Ayser Onder, who crossed the line in 55.16s and 55.23s, respectively.
The T20 class is reserved for athletes with intellectual impairments. Deepthi, India’s first-ever athlete in this category to compete at the Paralympic Games, faces cognitive challenges that affect her communication and understanding skills.
Born in a small village in Telangana, Deepthi faced significant challenges early in life. Villagers urged her parents to abandon her due to her features but despite financial hardships, Deepthi’s parents stood by her through thick and thin.
On the other hand, Jyothi who is in her early 20s, is currently the fastest Indian in the women’s 100m hurdles. Born on August 28, 1999, in Visakhapatnam (Vizag), Andhra Pradesh, Jyothi Yarraji, like many former and contemporary Indian athletes, grew up with limited means.
Her father, Suryanarayana, is a private security guard while her mother, Kumari, is a domestic help who works part-time as a cleaner in a city hospital. Combined, they earned less than Rs 18,000 per month.
Jyothi, however, was destined for better things and she was set on that path during her days at Vizag’s Port High School. Her physical education teacher felt that she had good height to be a hurdler and there was no looking back.
She first came into the spotlight in 2015 after winning the gold medal at an Andhra Pradesh inter-district meet. The following year, she moved to the SAI Centre in Hyderabad to train under coach N Ramesh, an Olympian and Dronacharya awardee. Since then, she has been consistently winning medals in junior and senior national meets. She later joined the Centre of Excellence, Guntur.
As the facility got abruptly closed in 2019, Jyothi moved bases to the Odisha Reliance Athletics High-Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar, where she came under the influence of British coach James Hillier. In January 2020, she clocked 13.03 seconds to win gold at the All-India Inter-University athletics meet in Moodabidri, Karnataka.
The Indian hurdler, however, ended the 2022 season with a flurry as she won gold in the 100m hurdles at the National Games with a new personal best of 12.79s, which made her the first Indian woman to dip below the 13-second mark in her discipline. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t qualify as a national record as the wind assist during the run was +2.5m/s.
