Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha, or PT Usha, is best known for her incredible run at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. She was the first Indian woman to reach the final of an Olympic athletics event. She was born on June 27, 1964, in Payyoli village, Kozhikode, Kerala. She has been associated with Indian athletics since 1979 and is often called the “Queen of Indian track and field”.
\nDue to the poverty of her family, she faced many difficulties in becoming an athlete, but overcoming all these difficulties, she became a great sprinter and brought laurels to our country.
\nHer most glorious performance occurred at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where she won the 400m hurdles heats. She missed a chance to win India\u2019s first track-and-field bronze in 400m hurdles just by 1\/100th of a second and secured fourth rank in the 400-meter hurdles.
\nBut she bounced back at the 1985 Asian Championship in Jakarta; Usha won six medals to set a record for the most gold medals won at a single event in the championship. In the 1986 Asian Games, Seoul, she struck gold medals in the 200m, 400m and 4X400m relay, with new game records. She also settled for the 100m silver.
\nUsha has won 102 national \/International medals and awards throughout her illustrious career. She was also awarded with the prestigious Arjuna Award and Padma Shree, one of India\u2019s highest civilian honors, in 1985, for showing outstanding performance in sports.
\nThis Indian track and field athlete retired in 1999, after which she founded a sports academy, the Usha School of Athletics, near Kozhikode, India. This is a non-profit organisation that trains future athletes. She has continued to inspire more lives even after her retirement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha, or PT Usha, is best known for her incredible run at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. She was the first Indian woman to reach the final of an Olympic athletics event. She was born on June 27, 1964, in Payyoli village, Kozhikode, Kerala. She has been associated with Indian athletics since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hapell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}