For PT Usha, India’s women’s 4x400m relay gold at the Asian Games was more than another medal. It was a moment that took her back to her own days on the track, while offering a glimpse of what the next generation of Indian women can achieve.
“Tears of joy, hearts full of pride!” Usha wrote in a three-part post on X after Kiran Pahal, M R Poovamma, Prachi Chaudhary and Vithya Ramraj won gold at the Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium on Tuesday.
“Watching our incredible 4x400m women’s relay team storm to a Gold medal finish brought back a flood of memories. I could feel every single stride, every heartbeat, and every ounce of grit out there on the track,” she wrote.
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The emotion was understandable. Usha knows the event intimately. She was part of India’s 4x400m relay team that won gold at the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, one of four gold medals she claimed at those Games.
Nearly 40 years later, she was watching another Indian quartet deliver the same result.
FROM HER GENERATION TO THE NEXT
The victory carried echoes of the relay golds that helped make the event synonymous with Indian women’s athletics at the Asian Games.
India had won the 4x400m title at every Games from 2002 to 2018 before finishing second in Hangzhou. Poovamma, the most experienced member of Tuesday’s quartet, was part of the gold-winning teams in 2014 and 2018.
This time, she shared the baton with a younger generation.
And they needed every bit of that collective experience when the race tightened in the final lap.
India was third when Vithya Ramraj took the baton for the anchor leg. She moved past China’s Zuo Siyu on the bend and then had Bahrain’s Salwa Naser, the individual 400m champion, chasing her down the home straight.
Vithya held her nerve. She crossed first in 3:29.69, ahead of Bahrain’s 3:30.21 and China’s 3:31.02, before raising both hands in celebration.
It was the kind of finish that made Usha’s words about every stride and every heartbeat more than a figure of speech.
‘THE LEGACY IS IN SAFE HANDS’
“Decades ago, we ran to show the world what Indian women could do. Today, these champions ran to rule the world,” she wrote.
The distinction in those two phrases captures what the victory meant to Usha. Her generation had to establish Indian women on the Asian athletics stage. The current generation is inheriting that legacy and extending it.
Usha also spoke of the responsibility that comes with that inheritance.
“You girls didn’t just win a medal; you carried the dreams of a billion people and delivered them beautifully,” she wrote. “The legacy of Indian athletics is in safe, fierce hands.”
The gold also ended India’s long wait for an athletics title at these Games. Six days into the athletics competition, the country’s contingent had watched medal opportunities come and go without a gold. The relay quartet finally delivered it in the penultimate event.
But for Usha, the significance went beyond ending a wait.
She had seen Indian women stand on the same podium before. She had been one of them.
Now, watching from outside the track, she could see a new generation taking ownership of an event that has been part of India’s Asian Games story for decades.
“Champions, you have made the entire nation weep tears of absolute pride. Keep flying high!” Usha wrote.
There was history in that message, but also something more immediate: the joy of watching a baton passed from one generation to another, and seeing the women carrying it take India back to the top.
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