World Athletics Championships: Jyothi Yarraji fails to qualify for 100m hurdles semi-finals

National record holder 100m hurdler Jyothi Yarraji failed to qualify for the semifinals of the World Athletics Championships as she finished seventh in her heat in yet another disappointing performance for India on Tuesday. The 23-year-old Yarraji clocked 13.05 seconds – well below her national record of 12.78s – to finish seventh in heat number four and 29th overall. The first four finishers in each of the five heats and the four other fastest athletes (24 in total) qualified for the semifinals. The last semifinals qualifier clocked 12.92s. Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Kendra Harrison of USA led the semifinal qualifiers with world season leading time of 12.24 seconds. Krishan Kumar also failed to make it to the men’s 800m semifinals after finishing seventh in his heat with a time of one minute 50.36 seconds. He has a personal best of 1:45.88. The first three finishers in each of the seven heats and the three other fastest athletes (24 in total) qualified for the men’s 800, semifinals. Reigning Asian champion Yarraji was expected to at least qualify for the semifinals, but she failed to live up to the expectations in her first World Championships. She had become the first Indian to win gold in women’s 100m hurdles in the Asian Championships last month. Indian athletes have disappointed so far in the world championships. On the opening day on Saturday, national record holder 3000m steeplechaser Avinash Sable failed to qualify for the final round after finishing a disappointing seventh in his heat race. Three Indians brought up the rear in the men’s 20km race walk final while young Shaili Singh also failed to make it to the women’s long jump final. Ajay Kumar Saroj ran his personal best of three minutes 38.24 seconds in men’s 1500m heats but that was not enough to qualify for the semifinals, while none of the three Indians in the men’s triple jump – Praveen Chithravel, Eldhose Paul and Abdulla Aboobacker – made it to the final round. On Sunday, Santhosh Kumar Tamilarasan and Sarvesh Anil Kushare had crashed out in the 400m hurdles heat race and high jump qualification round respectively.