Bhawna Jat

Bhawna Jat (born 3 January 1996) is an Indian racewalker who holds the 20 kilometres race walk national record of 1 hour 29 minutes 54 seconds set in February 2020.

Jat was born on 3 January 1996 as the youngest of three children into a family of farmers. She picked up racewalking at the age of 13 when her physical education teacher took her to a district-level athletics competition where slots were available only in the 3000 metres race walk; she finished second in the event. In the subsequent years, she would train only in the early hours of the day in order to avoid conservative villagers from seeing her in shorts. As her family was financially weak, she had to quit studies in college and even compete barefoot during her early years.

Between 2014 and 2015, Jat won medals in zonal and national junior level competitions. In 2016, she landed a job with the Indian Railways as a ticket collector in Howrah, West Bengal.

At the National Open Championships in February 2020, Jat broke the national record by clocking 1:29:54 and qualified for the 2020 Summer Olympics which had a qualification standard of 1:31:00. The timing was an improvement of over eight minutes from her previous personal best set in October 2019 and over 23 minutes from her February 2019 National Open Championships time.