Annu Rani Dharayan is an Indian javelin thrower from Uttar Pradesh. She was the first Indian to reach the finals of the women's javelin throw event in the World Athletics Championships, Doha, 2019.Annu had qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics through world rankings after missing out on the Olympic Qualification mark. Her career best effort is 63.24m which helped her win the gold in the National Interstate Athletic Championship, Patiala, 2021.In the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, Annu Rani scripted history as she became the first Indian female javelin thrower to win a medal, a bronze. She is the first Indian Javelin thrower to win a Gold medal in Asian games 2023 at Hangzhou.
She came from a poor family. her father was a farmer .her talent was identified by her brother.she used to play cricket with him and he noticed her upper body strength .He made her to hurl sugarcane stick in the empty field since they couldn't afford a Javelin stick,her first javelin stick was made by herself using a long bamboo stick.she started to play javelin at the age of 18 in the year 2010.Her father was not supporting her because he didnt like girls pursuing sports,her brother himself took interest and he himself began to pay for her training .her father finally came around to supporting Annu's talent after she proved herself by breaking the national record in 2014, and now supports her ambition.
In the 2014 National Inter-State Athletics Championship in Lucknow, Rani won the gold medal with a throw of 58.83 metres, breaking a 14-year-old national record and qualifying her for the 2014 Commonwealth Games where she finished eighth. Later in the year, she won the bronze medal at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, with a throw of 59.53 metres. Two years later she broke her own record again at the National Inter-state Athletics Championship with a throw of 60.01 metres.In March 2019, she broke her own record again with a throw of 62.34 meters at the National Senior Athletics Championships in Patiala, Punjab.
She won the Sportstar Aces Sportswoman of the Year Award in Athletics in 2020. She won the gold medal in the women's javelin throw event at the 59th National open athletetic championship.
Her story gives us a golden message that Where there's a will, there's a way means if someone really wants to do something, they will find a way to do it, even if there are things that make it hard to do.