Payyoli express

Indian Olympic Association: Four decades after she became one of the defining faces of Indian athletics, legendary sprinter and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) President P.T. Usha took a nostalgic trip down memory lane on social media, sharing photographs from her track days as she joined the ongoing fascination with all things 1980s.

“Heard the 80s are trending again, so I thought I’d take you back to my era,” Usha captioned the post, accompanying it with photographs from the period that established her as one of India’s most celebrated athletes.

These photographs provide a glimpse of the time when Usha, famously known as the ‘Payyoli Express’, was setting new records on the track. She participated in three Olympic Games: Moscow in 1980, Los Angeles in 1984, and Seoul in 1988, and made history as the first Indian woman to reach an Olympic athletics final. In the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, she narrowly missed winning a medal in the 400m hurdles, finishing fourth.