New Delhi, May 29 (PTI) Coach James Hillier believes Jyothi Yarraji is “one of the best in the world” in the final three hurdles, but is now planning to fine-tune her technique to help her attack the first five more aggressively.
The 25-year-old, an Asian Games silver medallist, clocked 12.96 seconds — a new championship record — to defend her 100m hurdles title at the Asian Athletics Championships in Gumi, South Korea, on Thursday.
Hillier said training adjustments focusing on shorter and longer strides approaching the first hurdle would be introduced to enhance her start phase.
“Now, it’s about being more specific with the training we do. So, we’ll start doing a lot more work over two or three hurdles. I’ll do some work where I’ll maybe do some shorter approach work into the first hurdle,” he told reporters.
“So, maybe like six-stride work, and then I’ll go the other way and do some 10-stride work. So, she gets a feeling then of going over the hurdle even quicker than eight strides because she’s got an extra two strides to work on.
“So, these are some of the little subtle things that we can do to get the feeling. The job is all about feeling. So, if I can create training sessions where she’s able to get the feeling she wants, once she’s done it, once she can repeat it, that’s just how she is as an athlete.” The Indian athlete will next be seen in action at the Taiwan Athletics Open scheduled for June 7-8.
“So, that’s the sort of things that I’ll be working on now over the next few weeks. We’ve got another competition coming up next week in Taiwan, and then we’ll head back to India. We’ll have a few weeks in India just doing some prep, and then we’ll head to Europe.” “So, I think by the time we get to Europe, I’ll be pretty confident that she’ll be sort of attacking these first five hurdles a bit quicker, and then that’ll set everything up even more for the back end of the race. She’s always going to be better at the back end of the race.” Hillier said the aim is to get Yarraji in touch with the front-runners by the halfway mark so that her strong finish can be more effective.
“That’s the sort of athlete she is. But she can be in touch with athletes at hurdle five, hurdle six. I think she’s probably one of the best, if not the best hurdler in the world in the last three hurdles. She’s absolutely phenomenal.
“But if we can just get her in touch with the real top girls, and hopefully we can get some really good meets now after this, then we can test that out as well. So, yeah, work to do. It’s always nice to get a gold medal and still have loads of work to do. So, that’s bode well for the next few races.” He added that the target during the final was not the qualifying time for the World Championships (12.73s), but simply winning the race.
“No, the world championship mark absolutely wasn’t (the target). It wasn’t about timing today. It was about positions. It was about racing. the tracks, I think a bit slow as well. It was just about trying to win, that was really the goal.” “She was very much focusing on her own race, but she was trying to win. She showed her experience because when the delays were happening, we could see the other girls were getting a bit frustrated and all the rest of it. And Jyothi just dealt with it really well.” Hillier was happy that his ward could clock a sub-13 timing.
“It was nice she got under 13 in those conditions. Definitely bodes well to her running, 12.73 and qualifying for world. So yeah, it was a good performance and I think better condition, she would have run probably 12.73 today,” he added.
Yarraji had suffered a hamstring injury in April after overreaching a hurdle in training, forcing her out for three weeks ahead of the Federation Cup and limiting her preparation time.
Hillier said the victory in Gumi was significant, especially since Yarraji is not yet in peak condition.
“We’ve had a funny preparation for this because she had an injury going into Federation Cup … she’s definitely not in an absolute peak at the moment. She’s hit training PBs, but not sort of race training PBs. So, the speed is there, the strength is there, but the hurdling isn’t quite there yet.
“So, I would expect her to push on from this now and the confidence she’s got from this is obviously massive. And yeah, we’ve got a bit of work to do with the eight stride still. So, yeah, it’s the rest of the season is going to be very exciting for sure.” PTI ATK KHS
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