Vithya Ramraj misses PT Usha's 39-year-old national record by 0.01s: Watch

Vithya Ramraj came dangerously close to breaking PT Usha's 39-year-old national record on way to the gold medal at the women's 400m hurdles final at the IGP 5 in Chandigarh on Monday. Vithya's timing of 55.43 seconds was 0.01 second short of PT Usha's record of 55.42s set in the 1984 Olympics.

On way to a win where Vithya was miles ahead of the rest of the field, she breached the 56s mark for the first time. The 2nd-placed runner in Monday's race was a whole 3 seconds behind Vithya.

"I am happy to have created a new personal best. There was no one pushing me here, at the Asian Games there will be Japan and China, maybe by competing with them I will break (PT Usha's) national record," the 24-year-old Vithya from Tamil Nadu told media after her win.

The IGP 5 is the last event for some athletes to touch the qualifying mark for the upcoming Asian Games and book their place in the contingent going to China for this event.

Among other athletes competing on Sunday, Yashas P met the Asian Games qualifying mark in men's 400m hurdles with a timing of 49.69 seconds.

As for Vithya, she had already qualified for Asian Games by clocking her previous PB of 56.01s at the Indian Athletics Championships held in Bhubaneswar on 19 June.

Going from strength to strength, she missed breaking the second oldest national record of Indian athletics after the marathon record from 1978 by Shivnath Singh. She did this with an improvement of 0.58 seconds on Monday.

Vithya is now the second fastest Asian athlete in women's 400m hurdles and will be a big medal contender at the Asian Games.

She came to the limelight at the Asian Athletics Championships in July where she just missed a medal in women's 100m hurdles and finished fourth with a timing of 13.55 seconds. On Sunday, she bettered her personal best in 400m by 0.03 seconds as she clinched gold by clocking 52.40 seconds which is the sixth best Asian time in 400m women this year.