Rain, a glitchy scoreboard and a coach speaking in signs: How Vithya Ramraj made history

Vithya had equalled P.T. Usha’s longstanding 400m hurdles national record at the Hangzhou Asian Games. Three years later, at the same stage but this time in Japan, she spectacularly smashed the record winning bronze along the way. | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy

As she crossed the finish line, Vithya Ramraj’s eyes went up to the giant digital screen at Mizuho Stadium.

The quarter-mile is a horrid mixture of sprinting and endurance, with the hurdles throwing in 10 jumps over a two and a half foot tall wooden barrier for good measure. Runners usually collapse on the ground right after, gasping for breathe. Vithya crouched on the red track, muscles still burning with lactate, scanning the names at the top and, more importantly, the times next to them.

UAE’s Mariam Kareem’s name flashed first. Next was Kazakhstan’s Adelina Zems.

Vithya waited for her name to come up. It didn’t, at first. Due to a glitch, it remained stuck at the bottom of the screen.

The 28-year-old knew it wasn’t right. She had crossed the finish line third. She wasn’t even all that far behind Kareem. There was no doubt about it. She had won bronze.

But she didn’t care about the medal.

She wanted to know what time she had run.

Finally, her name went up in third, with a number beside it.

54.75

Vithya whooped with joy, with a toothy smile one could spot from a mile away.

“I think I could have done 54.5 or 54.4,” Vithya said after the final. | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy

The oldest Indian record in track and field history — PT Usha’s mark of 55.42, set at the 1984 Olympics and standing for 42 years — had finally fallen.

It had previously been equalled by Vithya herself, at the Asian Games in Hangzhou. She had matched Usha’s mark in the semifinals of this event. It had seemed only a matter of time before she surpassed it. In the final, though, she never found her rhythm and, although she won bronze, the record eluded her.

Conditions in Nagoya did not look particularly encouraging for one of India’s most enduring sporting milestones to be breached. The skies have alternated between pelting showers and light drizzle over the previous couple of days. The synthetic track at Mizuho Stadium was moist and slick.

It had been difficult to stay warmed up and the surface had made at least some of India’s athletes wary of attacking the track. Just a few minutes after Vithya’s race, long jumper Murali Sreeshankar limped off with an injured ankle. India’s javelin throwers, too, admitted they were being careful about where they placed their feet.

— Dr Mansukh Mandaviya (@mansukhmandviya) September 28, 2026

Forget competing, Vithya says she hates even training in this kind of weather.

“Anything could happen. You could slip. You could fall. You could hit a hurdle and injure yourself,” she said after the race.

As she looked at the dark skies and the showers coming down before her final, Vithya made a desperate plea to the Gods of air, sky and track and field.

“Please God, make it stop raining!” she recalled.

She was still thinking about the rain after warming up when her coach Nehpal Singh Rathore told her to snap out of it.

“ Mazhai pathi ninaikadha (Don’t think about the rain). Evlo kashta patirka indha race-kaga. (Remember everything you’ve gone through to take part in this race). So, go for it,” he said.

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Finding her way to athletics

Vithya didn’t always think she would become a 400m hurdler – probably the best of all time in India.

The daughter of a tempo driver and a homemaker in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, she and her twin sister Nithya got their first taste of sport playing hockey at school. Encouraged by their physical training teacher to pursue sport as a career, the sisters won admission to the Erode Girls Sports School when they were in Class 7.

There, the two specialised in athletics. Nithya would go on to excel in the shorter sprints, while Vithya gravitated towards the quarter-mile and began competing in the 400m hurdles in 2018.

The 400m is considered one of the toughest sprint events and Vithya admits she was never an eager runner. She didn’t enjoy the intensity of the training, wasn’t sure whether she wanted to specialise in the flat 400m and had doubts about her stamina over the distance.

Congratulations Vithya!!
Records are meant to be broken & there is no greater reward for an athlete than to see the next generation go beyond the boundaries we once set. Vithya Ramraj breaking my 43-year-old national record in the 400m hurdles is an incredibly special moment. pic.twitter.com/zkmgDjvMfY

— P.T. USHA (@PTUshaOfficial) September 28, 2026

“The 400m race is one of the hardest sprints to do. I also didn’t have the endurance I needed. During the race, I would always do well in the first 300m but I never had any energy in the last 100m. There were so many races where I led until the final turn and then was overtaken by other runners. I was also not sure which event I should specialise in. I was a 400m runner but a lot of coaches told me I should focus on the 400m hurdles because I had a better chance of winning a medal there,” she remembered.

Things changed in 2021 after she began training with Nehpal.

FROM THE ARCHIVES | .01 seconds shy of Usha’s 39-year-old record, Vithya Ramraj looks to hurdle into record books

The son of a business family from Rajasthan who was raised in Tamil Nadu, Nehpal had been a sprinter who had both trained alongside and coached Nithya. He currently coaches at Chennai’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

Vithya’s personal bests in the 400m (54.48) and 400m hurdles (59.01) were modest at the time, but Nehpal, who is 28 himself, felt the wiry, 164cm-tall Vithya had plenty of potential.

“She obviously had talent but what I was looking for was willpower. If you are hardworking I can do something with you. She may not have believed it but when I started to work with her I told Vithya, ‘You will break PT Usha’s record,’” he said.

Vithya remembers how difficult it was to adapt to Nehpal’s plans.

“Every week I would be given a target I had to accomplish in my training. If I couldn’t, I would have to repeat the same thing until I got it. There was a time when I repeated the same training for seven weeks. I remember I was vomiting each day because the training was so hard. There wasn’t a day when I didn’t think I should stop competing. Every day I would cry thinking about how hard it was going to be,” she remembered.

It was hard, but the gains in endurance would be worth it.

In September 2021, Vithya had her breakout competition when she won gold in the 400m, 400m hurdles and 4x400m mixed relay at the National Open Championships in Warangal. She joined the national camp on the basis of those achievements.

Although she was expected to become India’s next top 400m runner, Vithya didn’t progress as rapidly at the national camp and, a year later, decided to return to Chennai to train with Nehpal.

It was a difficult call. By training individually, she no longer benefited from having her diet, equipment and training expenses taken care of as she had at the national camp.

Money was tight and Vithya had no sponsors.

Eventually, with Nithya contributing part of her salary and Vithya paying the rest from her own pocket, she rented a room in Chennai’s Nungambakkam so she could be close to her training venue.

Nehpal, the son of Rajasthani immigrants to Chennai, speaks seven Indian languages. But on Monday evening, from the stands, he communicated wordlessly through sign language. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Nehpal doesn’t like to talk much about those days.

“What’s the use of talking about tough times? Those are between Vithya and me. But both of us know what we went through,” he said.

Through it all, Vithya steadily progressed.

She made the Asian Games team in 2023. Although she equalled Usha’s record there, she didn’t break it and, over the next three years, never came close to doing so.

The reason, paradoxically enough, was that she was so much better than everyone else in India.

“Right now, Vithya is so much stronger than anyone else in India that she has to push herself throughout the race. After four hurdles she was already in front of everyone. To run a really fast time, you need someone who can pull you forward. When you are running by yourself, it’s much harder,” Nehpal explained.

That’s where the Asian Games came in. This was where Vithya could get the push she needed to record the time Nehpal felt she was capable of.

This wasn’t 55.42, though.

That mark is one of the most iconic numbers in Indian track and field history. But if Vithya wasn’t thinking about the medal, she wasn’t thinking about the record either.

Sportstar would later ask her: does the record matter to you?

“No,” came the answer.

The belief is shared by Nehpal.

“There’s nothing to be proud of letting a mark stand for 40 years. What have we been doing all this while?” he shot back.

The goal, he insisted, was always to get Vithya to run in the 54-second range.

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“When Vithya came to me, I told her she would break P.T. Usha’s record but the target was to one day qualify for the finals and make the top eight at the World Championships. To do that you have to be running in the low 54-second range,” he says.

It was a lofty target, easier said than done.

Vithya doubted, but was convinced by Nehpal.

“You need so much speed to go below 55. But coach believed and so I believed. Indian coaches can do it. We can do it. Serndhu panuvom (Together, we’ll get it done).” she exclaimed.

The 400m is considered one of the toughest sprint events and Vithya admits she was never an eager runner. She didn’t enjoy the intensity of the training, wasn’t sure whether she wanted to specialise in the flat 400m and had doubts about her stamina over the distance. | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy

On Monday evening, It seemed even the Gods were on her side.

By the time she stepped onto the track for the start of her race, the skies above Nagoya had cleared.

Standing on lane five, in the middle of the competition, Vithya scanned the crowd looking for Nehpal.

He had not been able to travel to the Hangzhou Asian Games. Vithya would say later that she had missed his calming presence — while Nehpal himself would laugh away the idea.

But he was in Nagoya.

And almost instinctively, he caught Vithya’s eye.

Nehpal, the son of Rajasthani immigrants to Chennai, speaks seven Indian languages. But on Monday evening, from the stands, he communicated wordlessly through sign language.

He put up two fingers.

Careful on the first two hurdles.

He punched his right fist into his palm.

Hit the fifth hurdle.

He simulated his palm taking off.

Attack after six.

That’s exactly what she did.

She took off and settled into her rhythm. Sixteen precise strides between each obstacle. On the fourth, she realised she was going a little slow. So she picked up the pace.

As Vithya came around the bend, she fed off the centrifugal force she had gathered.

On the sixth hurdle, she believed she was going to run the time she wanted.

Her muscles were burning by now but she willed herself forward.

“After that I thought only four more hurdles. C’mon Vithya, push panu. Push panu. (Come on Vithya, push yourself),” she recalled.

With the last obstacle in sight, Vithya even seemed poised for a breathtaking win.

But her very last jump clipped the horizontal wooden bar.

Her pace broke and she fell back.

Not hard enough to cost her a medal. Not hard enough to cost her the record. But enough for Vithya to know what she has in her. “I think I could have done 54.5 or 54.4,” she said later.

That’s for another day.

For now, she has done her best. Any exhaustion is long gone, long replaced by elation.

“Best panadhu apram yaaru tired avanga (Who will get tired after doing their best)?” she gleamed.