National Open Athletics Championships: Vithya Ramraj Breaks PT Usha's 39-Year-Old Record

Asian Games bronze medalist Vithya Ramraj broke PT Usha's long-standing women's 400m hurdles meet record at the National Open Athletics Championships 2024 on Monday at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru.  (More Sports News)

On the final day of the 63rd National Open Championships, Vithya ran 400m hurdles in 56.23s to overtake the meet record set by the legendary Usha (56.80s) in 1985.

“P.T. Usha is an absolute legend. Her meet record has stood for so many years. My coach was keen that I break this long-standing record. He wanted my name to be up there on the record list,” Vithya, who won the 400m hurdles bronze at the 2022 Asian Games, said as quoted by Sportstar.

As per the report in Sportstar, Vithya’s coach Nehpal Singh promised his ward five days of leave if she could run under 57 seconds. Now that she has done that, the Asian Games bronze medalist plans to spend time with her parents.

“I’ll use this leave period to spend time with my parents in Coimbatore. I have not seen them in a year,” Vithya said.

Sinchal, participating for Railways, took the second spot in the 400m hurdles with 57.60 seconds while Prajna from Karnataka clocked 57.90 seconds to bag the third position.

At the heats of Hangzhou Asian Games last year, Ramraj had matched PT Usha's 39-year-old national record of 55.42s in 400m hurdles.

At the concluding day of the National Open Athletics Championships on Monday, Services' experienced long jumper Ancy Sojan bagged the best female athlete award while Tamil Nadu's Nithin, the 200m gold medalist at the event, got the best male athlete award.

The men's team trophy went to Services (137 points) while the women's title went to Railways (201 points), who were also declared overall champions of the meet with 318 points.