One of Each: Vithya Ramraj’s Six Days in Nagoya
A relay silver, a 400m hurdles bronze in the national record that finally retired P.T. Usha’s 55.42 from 1984, and the last lap of India’s only athletics gold. The 28-year-old from Coimbatore leaves Aichi–Nagoya with a medal of every colour.
On Tuesday night in Nagoya, Vithya Ramraj took the baton for the last lap of the women's 4x400m relay in second place, behind China. Bahrain's Salwa Eid Naser, the 400m champion at these Games and the Olympic silver medallist, set off from last, a little over five seconds later by Sportstar's count. Vithya passed China's Zuo Siyu around halfway through her lap and held Naser off down the home straight. India won in 3:29.69. Bahrain finished 0.52 seconds behind.
It was Vithya's third final in six days, and it completed a set. On Thursday she anchored India to silver in the mixed 4x400m relay. On Monday she won bronze in the 400m hurdles in 54.75, a national record and the first time an Indian woman has run the event in under 55 seconds. On Tuesday came the gold, and with it one medal of each colour.
That gold was India's only one in track and field at these Games. The athletics programme closed on Tuesday with 24 Indian medals (one gold, nine silver, 14 bronze), against 29 and six golds at Hangzhou three years ago. Without the relay, as The Hindu noted, Indian athletics would have come home from an Asian Games without a gold for the first time in 32 years.
The number that will outlast the week, though, is 54.75. P.T. Usha ran 55.42 when she finished fourth at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and for 42 years no Indian woman ran the 400m hurdles faster. Vithya equalled the mark in a Hangzhou heat in October 2023, then spent three seasons stuck on it. Her coach says the problem wasn't speed. Nobody in India could make her use it. In Nagoya, with Asia's best around her, she took 0.67 seconds off the record. The other half of the story is how she reached that start line: with a personal coach outside the national camp, a twin sister's salary, and a sponsor who arrived only in 2025.
Thursday: rested in the morning, anchor at night
India's mixed relay team reached the final without her. Manu T.S., M.R. Poovamma, Jay Kumar and Kiran Pahal ran 3:16.23 in Thursday morning's heats, second in theirs and fourth fastest overall. For the final that night Vishal T.K. and Vithya came in for Jay Kumar and Kiran. The team ran in the order Manu, Poovamma, Vishal, Vithya.
The race nearly got away from them. Sportstar's account has India sixth midway through Poovamma's second leg before Vishal's third leg dragged them back into contention. Then the United Arab Emirates, who were leading, lost the baton at the last exchange when their 18-year-old anchor, Mariam Kareem, missed it, and the official result lists them as disqualified. That left Vithya third. Ahead of her were Bahrain's Naser, out of reach, and Vietnam's Nguyen Thi Ngoc, who was catchable. Vithya caught her in the final few dozen metres. India finished in 3:14.46, 0.08 seconds ahead of Vietnam, and Bahrain won in a Games record 3:12.87.
Her coach, Nehpal Singh Rathore, had not been able to travel to Hangzhou. In Nagoya he was in the stands, and she raced towards him. "I was seeing my coach's face; I was not seeing any competitor, nothing," she told IANS. She dedicated the medal to her twin, Nithya, who ran the 100m hurdles in Hangzhou but did not make this team. She also gave her aim for the week in one line. She had won three medals at the last Asian Games, two silvers and a bronze, "so this Asian Games, I tried to change my medal colour."
Monday: 54.75
Rain had come and gone over Nagoya for days. By Monday the Mizuho Park track was moist and slick, in Sportstar's description, and Vithya hates even training in that kind of weather. She had qualified on Sunday in 55.73, second in her heat behind Kazakhstan's Adelina Zems. Before the final, by her account to Moneycontrol, Rathore told her: "Go for the timing, not the medal." He gave her the race plan from the stands in hand signals, Sportstar reported: careful over the first two hurdles, hit the fifth, attack after the sixth.
She held 16 strides between hurdles and picked up the pace after the fourth, when she sensed she was slow. With the last hurdle in sight she looked, to Sportstar's reporter, poised to win, until she clipped it. She crossed third. Kareem, the 18-year-old whose dropped baton had opened the door for India four nights earlier, won in a Games record 54.31, and Zems ran a personal best of 54.58. The scoreboard was slow to post Vithya's name, and when it did, the time beside it was 54.75. Anu Raghavan, India's other finalist, was fifth in a personal best of 55.88.
"It is not about the record but the timing," Vithya told The Times of India. She thought she had left something on the track: "I think I could have done 54.5 or 54.4," she told Sportstar. Usha, now president of the Indian Olympic Association, was in the stadium. "Records are meant to be broken," she said in a statement, "and there is no greater reward for an athlete than to see the next generation go beyond the boundaries we once set."
| Place | Nagoya · 28 September 2026 | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mariam Kareem, UAEGames record; eighth at the 2025 Asian Championships in 58.35 | 54.31 |
| 2 | Adelina Zems, KazakhstanPersonal best; eighth in the Hangzhou final | 54.58 |
| 3 | Vithya Ramraj, IndiaNational record; 55.73 in Sunday’s heat | 54.75 |
| 4 | Kong Yingying, China | 55.78 |
| 5 | Anu Raghavan, IndiaPersonal best | 55.88 |
| Hangzhou · 3 October 2023 | ||
| 1 | Kemi Adekoya, BahrainGames record at the time | 54.45 |
| 2 | Mo Jiadie, China | 55.01 |
| 3 | Vithya Ramraj, IndiaAfter 55.42 in the heats, equalling Usha’s record | 55.68 |
| 8 | Adelina Zems, Kazakhstan | 1:00.27 |
The final also showed how fast the event has moved in Asia. In three years the bronze-medal time at the Asian Games has fallen by almost a second, and both women who beat her on Monday had finished eighth in a continental final since 2023: Zems in Hangzhou, Kareem at the 2025 Asian Championships in Gumi, where Vithya won bronze in 56.46. Vithya's own time fell with the event.
Tuesday: the last lap
The women's relay final was run in the rain again, with India in lane six. The plan, Kiran Pahal told Sportstar, was simple: "We needed to give Vithya 50 meters." Kiran handed over in third and Poovamma moved India up to second. Prachi Choudhary, the individual 400m bronze medallist, then fought off a charge from Bahrain's Zainab Fyofuoba to hand over in second behind China, with Naser waiting in last. "I had to give her as much of a lead as I could," Prachi told Sportstar.
Vithya told The Indian Express what she said to herself as Naser closed in: "It's the last race of your season, Vithya. Go for it." By Sportstar's account, Naser got within about a dozen metres on the home straight. India had won this event at five straight Games, from Busan 2002 to Jakarta 2018, before Bahrain beat them in Hangzhou. Now the title came back, with Vithya on the last leg. "This gold is my third medal here," she said in remarks circulated by the Inspire Institute of Sport and carried by ANI.
The one with the earrings
Vithya was born in Coimbatore on 20 September 1998, a minute after Nithya, so she turned 28 the day after the opening ceremony. The twins are the youngest of three sisters; Sathya is the eldest. Their father, Ramraj, drove a tempo in Coimbatore (a lorry until 2020, in his own telling to Rediff), and the family lived in rented homes. Their mother, Meena, a homemaker, pushed the twins into sport. "People asked you are three women, how will you survive? My mother decided we have to do something. So, she put us in a sports hostel," Vithya told PTI in 2023.
When the girls were in Class 6, a physical education teacher pointed their parents to the Girls' Sports Hostel in Erode, about 100 km from home. They joined it for Class 7 and stayed until Class 12. Hockey came first, then athletics took over. In Hangzhou the twins gave Onmanorama a way to tell them apart: "The one wearing earrings is Vithya. The one with a birthmark on the forehead is Nithya."
Vithya works for the Southern Railway's Palakkad division. Nithya, a 100m hurdler, works for the Income Tax Department in Chennai, and before Vithya had the Railways job, Gulf News reported, Nithya's salary helped pay for her training. In 2023 the sisters treated Hangzhou as their one chance to go together. If they missed it, Vithya told PTI that September, "the next is in 2026 and we may have been married by then. Something may happen, we may get injured." Three years later, only one of them made it to Nagoya.
Three years on the line
She moved from the sprints to the 400m and the 400m hurdles in 2017. The national camp at NIS Patiala, which she joined in 2018, did not suit her: the food, the language and too little individual attention, according to Gulf News and myKhel. Covid and an appendicitis operation then wrecked her build-up to the Tokyo Olympic trials. From 2021 the twins trained in Chennai under Rathore at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
By 2023 she was winning the hurdles at India's national meets, the Federation Cup in May and the Inter-State Championships in June. In September, at Grand Prix 5 in Chandigarh, she missed Usha's record by one hundredth of a second, running 55.43. Three weeks later she ran 55.42 in a Hangzhou heat to equal it, and took bronze in the final in 55.68.
After that the record didn't move. For three seasons her times sat in the 56s: 56.23 for a meet record at the 2024 National Open in Bengaluru, 56.04 at the 2025 Federation Cup in Kochi, 56.46 for bronze in Gumi. At the Paris Olympics she led off India's 4x400m relay, which went out in the heats in 3:32.51. Rathore's explanation, given to Sportstar in Nagoya, is that she had nobody to chase. "Right now, Vithya is so much stronger than anyone else in India that she has to push herself throughout the race," he said. "When you are running by yourself, it's much harder."
Rathore has little patience for the mystique of the old mark. Asked in Nagoya whether the record mattered to her, Vithya told Sportstar it did not, and her coach went further.
"There's nothing to be proud of letting a mark stand for 40 years. What have we been doing all this while?" — Nehpal Singh Rathore
The money arrived late. After Hangzhou the Tamil Nadu government paid her ₹80 lakh for her three medals, Sportstar reported, but no sponsor followed. "I got some support from the state government for winning a bronze but I didn't get any sponsorships or anything that I needed," she told Sportstar in April 2025. JSW Sports began sponsoring her early that year: "Now I am able to travel for competitions. I don't have to worry about flight tickets or hotels." After her Gumi bronze she was added to the development group of the sports ministry's Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS). After the mixed relay she named her backers in order: "First of all, thanks to the Athletics Federation of India, TOPS, SAI, then my state government, then Indian Railways." By Tuesday night Tamil Nadu's chief minister, C. Joseph Vijay, had announced ₹50 lakh for her silver, ₹30 lakh for the bronze and ₹75 lakh for the gold, ₹1.55 crore in all.
What comes next
Rathore's target was never 55.42. "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," he told Sportstar. "To do that you have to be running in the low 54-second range." She has never run at a World Championships. The entry standard for the last one, in Tokyo in 2025, was 54.65, a tenth faster than she ran on Monday. The next is in Beijing in 2027.
First, she told ANI on Monday night, "I will go home and eat my mom's food." After that, the work goes back to the target Rathore set her when she arrived in Chennai: the low 54s, and a place in a world final.
On 8 October Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay presented Vithya with ₹1.55 crore at a felicitation in Chennai, where the state also launched a “Dream Olympics” scheme that pays its Asian and Commonwealth Games medallists ₹50 lakh a year, including a ₹1 lakh monthly stipend (The New Indian Express, The Hindu). On 7 October Tanishq gave her its “Pudhumai Penn” award, and Velammal Nexus gave a car each to her and to Rathore (DT Next).
She has said that Rathore is “not happy” with 54.75 and that the target for next season is under 54 seconds. She credited the sleep she got in three months of pre-Games training in Spała, Poland. “I want Vithya to make it to the final,” Rathore said of the 2027 World Championships in Beijing (Sportstar, 7 October).
Sourcing. Official Aichi–Nagoya 2026 results (mixed and women’s 4x400m relay finals) and the Games’ Wikipedia event pages compiled from official results (400m hurdles 2023, 2026; 2025 Asian Championships); Olympics.com (heats, India’s athletics tally); Sportstar race reports by Jonathan Selvaraj (24, 28 and 29 September), Sportstar profiles (April 2025, 7 October 2026); IANS (24 September); ANI (28 and 29 September); PTI and P.T. Usha’s posted statement; The Indian Express (Mihir Vasavda; Andrew Amsan, 2023); The Hindu; Moneycontrol; Hindustan Times; The Times of India (28 September); India Today; Onmanorama (September 2023); PTI via The Times of India (September 2023); Outlook (2023, 2024); The Bridge (Paris 2024); Gulf News; myKhel; Rediff; The New Indian Express; DT Next; Wikipedia (date of birth, citing World Athletics). The carousel’s slide numbers below follow the published 12-slide order.
Corrections to the carousel. Slide 4: she was “second with under 300m to go” — she passed Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Ngoc only in the closing few dozen metres, per Sportstar (“in the final stretch”) and Odisha Bytes (“final 50 metres”). Slide 5: P.T. Usha’s quote is altered — her statement (posted on X, carried by PTI and ANI) ends “go beyond the boundaries we once set”, not “go beyond it”. Slide 6: “M.R. Poovamma took India to the front and Prachi Choudhary held it” — Poovamma handed over with only China ahead, and Prachi handed over in second behind China’s Zhou Li; Vithya took the lead from China’s Zuo Siyu around 200m into her leg, per Sportstar, The Hindu and Hindustan Times; its Prachi Choudhary quote credited to ANI (“My main target was to give as much lead as possible to Vithya…”) could not be found, and the copy uses her words to Sportstar. Slide 7: the quote on her mother (“People often asked her how we would manage with only girls…”) could not be found; the copy uses her September 2023 PTI interview. Slide 8: the move to Chennai and coach Nehpal Singh Rathore is dated 2022 — she began with Rathore in 2021 per Rathore (The New Indian Express, Sportstar) and Wikipedia, though Sportstar and The Indian Express (2023) say she then spent about a year in the national camp and returned to him full-time in late 2022, which the slide’s date may reflect; its “now or never… marriage, injury” quote credited to The Tribune (2023) could not be found, and the copy uses PTI’s September 2023 wording; the slide also files the appendicitis surgery under the 2018 Patiala camp, while Gulf News and myKhel place it in the Covid period before the Tokyo trials.
Flag. Start of the women’s relay anchor leg: The Indian Express says she began the last lap in the lead, and PTI (National Herald, DT Next) and Khel Now have India in front after the second and third legs; Sportstar, The Hindu and Hindustan Times have her second behind China, which this piece follows, as does ISJ’s relay feature. No official splits were published. Sportstar has Naser “within a dozen meters” on the home straight before Vithya “pulled ahead once again”; at the line the gap was 0.52 seconds, roughly four metres, so the copy keeps only the attributed dozen metres. Mixed relay order: The Times of India had Vishal leading off and Vithya taking over from Manu; the official results list Manu, Poovamma, Vishal, Vithya, as the slide does. Age: Gulf News gave her age as 27; her date of birth (20 September 1998, World Athletics via Wikipedia) makes her 28 throughout the Games. The record’s age: Usha’s own statement calls it “43-year-old”; it was set in 1984, 42 years earlier. Hockey: a 2023 Minnambalam profile places it at the Erode hostel, as slide 7 does; Wikipedia and her father (to Rediff) put it at school, before Erode. Her father’s work is given as tempo driver (PTI, Onmanorama, Sportstar), lorry driver until 2020 (Rediff), truck driver (Gulf News, The Indian Express 2023, The Times of India 2026) and autorickshaw driver (The Times of India 2023, The Indian Express 2026). Her mother is Meena in PTI and The Times of India (2023), Meenakumari in Onmanorama. Mariam Kareem’s age (18) is confirmed by her date of birth in the official results (25 January 2008). The Erode institution is a sports hostel in PTI (2023) and a sports school in Sportstar and Wikipedia. When she took up the 400m hurdles: 2017 in this piece (Gulf News, myKhel); Sportstar says she began competing in the event in 2018. The Indian Express quote first used here for the 400m hurdles final (“This race will not come again…”) could not be found and was replaced with her words to The Times of India. The IANS transcript has Vithya thanking “Bhanot sir” for her coach’s presence; her coach is Nehpal Singh Rathore, and that line is not quoted. Nithya’s salary funding Vithya’s training is reported by Gulf News and myKhel, and confirmed by Vithya to The Indian Express in 2023 (“My sister had a job so she took care of all my training expenses”) and by Sportstar.
