Odisha Girl Sabita Toppo Bags Silver In Asian Youth Athletics Ch’ships

Bhubaneshwar: The 17-year-old 100M sprint hurdler Sabita Toppo ran an impressive 14.17 to bag the silver at the Asian Youth Athletics Championship held in Kuwait, following the gold that she won in 100m hurdles at the National Youth (U-18) Athletics meet in Bhopal.

Sabita, who hails from Sundergarh in Odisha, is the youngest of six siblings. She joined the Odisha Reliance foundation HPC in 2019, and that has had a transformational impact on her life with an improvement in her timing by more than two seconds in the years since.

Chief Minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik on Twitter, congratulated Sabita on her performance.

Congratulations #Odisha hurdler, Sabita Toppo, an athlete of Odisha Reliance Foundation Athletics HPC, on bagging a 🥈medal in 100mtr hurdles with a timing of 14.17s at the 4th Asian Youth Athletics Championships in Kuwait.

We are proud of you.👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/2ByvZzj9NE

— Odisha Sports (@sports_odisha) October 15, 2022

Sabita, said, “I feel so happy winning this medal. There is a lot of hardwork and I would like to thank the Chief Minister Sir for his kind words, the support from the Odisha government and Odisha Reliance Foundation HPC and I am looking forward to improving my timing at every race and working with my coaches.”

James Hillier, Athletics Director of the Reliance Foundation Athletics Programme, said, “Sabita has been a very inspirational story. From personal setbacks to keep performing at the highest levels requires a lot of motivation and she possess an abundance of that quality. She has made tremendous improvement in her race craft working with her coach Rohit Mane, and I see a lot more potential in her, in the months to come.”