P. T. Usha Ran 55.42 Seconds in the 1984 Olympic 400 m Hurdles Final, Fourth by One Hundredth of a Second, and Two Years Later Won Four Golds at the Seoul Asian Games

In the final of the women’s 400 metres hurdles at the Los Angeles Olympics on 8 August 1984, Usha ran 55.42 seconds and finished fourth, 0.01 second behind Cristieana Cojocaru of Romania, who took bronze. Two years later, at the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, she won gold in the 200 m, 400 m, 400 m hurdles and 4 x 400 m relay and silver in the 100 m. The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), which runs the Games, says that made her the athlete with the most athletics golds at Seoul.

The final, lane by lane

Olympedia, the database kept by Olympic historians, lists the final as 8 August 1984 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Nawal El-Moutawakel of Morocco won in 54.61, an Olympic record. Judi Brown of the United States was second in 55.20 and Cojocaru third in 55.41. Fourth in 55.42 from lane 5 was Usha, and Ann-Louise Skoglund of Sweden was fifth in 55.43. Eight women ran, and the last in the field, Sandra Farmer of Jamaica, finished in 57.15.

It was the first time the event had been on the Olympic programme. East German and Soviet athletes had led the event until then, Olympedia says, and the Soviet-led boycott of the Games left the race open. Twenty countries sent 26 starters, by the same page’s count. Olympedia’s tables give Usha’s route to the final.

• 5 August, heat 1: second in 56.81, behind Judi Brown (55.97), in lane 2.
• 6 August, semi-final 2: first in 55.54, ahead of Brown (55.97), in lane 2. Her time was third best of the 16 semi-finalists.
• 8 August, final: fourth in 55.42, in lane 5.

The Athletics Federation of India (AFI), the sport’s national body, says she was the first Indian woman to reach a final in an Olympic event, and describes the finish as a photo finish.

What she and the reports said about the race

Several accounts say the race was restarted. According to Scroll.in the runners had to start again after a competitor committed a foul, which it says disturbed Usha’s rhythm. No restart appears on Olympedia’s page for the event.

Food at the Games Village is what she has blamed. In an interview carried by The Quint in August 2018, she said she had eaten rice porridge with a Kerala mango pickle and some fruit, without a nutrition supplement, and that her energy fell away over the last 35 metres. Her start, she has said, was a good one. Scroll.in adds that she has described the podium as within reach.

In Paris on the night of 7 August 2024, Onmanorama reported, Usha met El-Moutawakel at the Stade de France. El-Moutawakel called her a sister and said many people had expected Usha to win in 1984. The memory of Los Angeles still brought back the pain of the narrow miss, Usha said.

The relay in Los Angeles

A second event put her back on the track in Los Angeles. India’s 4 x 400 m relay team of Valsamma, Vandana Rao, Shiny Abraham and Usha finished fourth in its heat on 10 August in 3:33.85, one of the two fastest non-qualifiers, and went through to the final. She anchored in 51.63 in the heat.

On 11 August the same four ran 3:32.49 in the final and finished seventh. Olympedia’s splits give Usha’s last leg as 51.75. Over the flat 400 m her listed personal best, set in 1985, is 51.61.

From Moscow at 16 to the Asian titles

She was born on 20 May 1964 at Koothali in Kerala, Olympedia says. The AFI places her in Payyoli, Kozhikode district, and gives her the nickname Payyoli Express. In Moscow in 1980, aged 16, she ran the 100 m and 200 m, going out in the first round of each.

At the Asian Games in New Delhi, held from 19 November to 4 December 1982, she won silver in the 100 m and 200 m. In the same Games, Olympedia lists her teammate Valsamma as the 400 m hurdles gold medallist and a member of the silver-medal 4 x 400 m relay team. India finished fifth in the table, with 13 gold, 19 silver and 25 bronze medals, the OCA says.

The AFI records that she won the 400 m at the 1983 Asian Championships in Kuwait with an Asian record, and that she took five golds at the 1985 championships in Jakarta. Five golds at Jakarta are also in ESPN’s account, while The Bridge says five medals. The AFI counts 13 golds across the championships from 1983 to 1989.

Seoul, 1986

The 10th Asian Games ran from 20 September to 5 October 1986, with 4,839 athletes from 27 national Olympic committees, the OCA says. Gold in the 200 m, 400 m, 400 m hurdles and 4 x 400 m relay, and silver in the 100 m, make up the five medals Olympedia lists for her.

Lydia de Vega of the Philippines took the 100 m, ESPN and The Bridge both say, and ESPN calls Usha’s margin wafer thin. In the 200 m she beat de Vega by a whisker, The Bridge says, and she won the 400 m and the hurdles by a clear distance. Games records came in every gold-medal event, say ESPN and the AFI. No times appear in either piece, and tuput found no results table for Seoul on a page it could open, so it prints none.

The relay medal was shared. Valsamma and Shiny Abraham are listed by Olympedia as gold medallists in the same relay, and Abraham also took silver in the 400 m. India’s final tally at Seoul was 5 gold, 9 silver and 23 bronze, ninth in the table, the OCA says. By that count, four of India’s five golds at the Games came in events Usha won.

The next decade

At the Olympics in Seoul in 1988 Usha ran the 400 m hurdles heats and went out in round one, seventh in her heat, and Olympedia lists her as not starting in the relay. A heel injury kept her from the Olympic medal she wanted, ESPN says. The AFI says she married in 1991 and then returned to the track, and that she was named in the 4 x 400 m relay squad for Atlanta in 1996 without running, though Olympedia lists no Atlanta entry for her.

Three silvers at Beijing in 1990, in the 400 m, the 4 x 100 m relay and the 4 x 400 m relay, are on Olympedia’s list for her, with one more silver, in the 4 x 400 m relay, at Hiroshima in 1994. Its Asian Games total for her is 4 gold, 7 silver and no bronze. Two silvers at Beijing is ESPN’s count. In 1998 the AFI records a 4 x 100 m relay gold at the Asian Championships, run in 44.43 seconds with Rachita Mistry, EB Shyla and Saraswati Saha, a time the federation’s page calls the current national record.

Usha runs the Usha School of Athletics at Koyilandi, near Kozhikode, according to the AFI. One of its athletes, Tintu Luka, reached the 800 m semi-finals at London in 2012, ESPN says. Presidency of the Indian Olympic Association, from 2022, is listed against her name by Olympedia. Another Indian sprinter’s Olympic fourth place, in the 400 m final at Rome in 1960, is covered in tuput’s piece on Milkha Singh, and later Olympic athletics medals are set out in the profile of Neeraj Chopra.

Where the sources differ

Some news reports name Sweden’s Ann-Louise Skoglund as the silver medallist in 1984. Olympedia’s results table has Judi Brown second and Skoglund fifth, and tuput follows the table. One hundredth short of becoming the first Indian to win an Olympic athletics medal is how ESPN puts it. A British resident of Calcutta who ran the 1900 sprints for Great Britain is how Olympedia’s page for India describes Norman Pritchard, so tuput makes no claim of a first. The question of who counts as India’s first Olympic medallist is set out in its piece on Khashaba Jadhav.

The Olympedia page for Usha gives her birth place as Koothali, the AFI’s page gives Payyoli, and the AFI gives no birth date. Honours including the Padma Shri and the Arjuna Award are named by the AFI without years, and tuput did not find an official list it could open to confirm the years, so it gives none. The 55.42 of 1984 stands as her personal best in the event, according to Olympedia.