Aishwarya Mishra

Happy birthday to India’s Aishwarya Mishra, an Asian Games silver medallist who is one of the four fastest women India has ever had over 400m.

Aishwarya’s 51.12 stands as the National Games record, set at Dehradun in February 2025, where she won by more than three seconds and broke her own Games record by over a second in the process. It is the fourth-fastest 400m ever run by an Indian woman. Her account of it is better than the number: she could not believe she had run a personal best, she had thought it would be something like 52, and she was in a trance for five or ten minutes afterwards. And then the line that every quarter-miler will recognise instantly — **it felt like I was running 300m, not 400.**

The international record is serious. Silver in the 4x400m relay at the Asian Games, plus fourth in the individual 400m. At the Asian Championships in Bangkok, **gold** in the mixed 4x400m, bronze in the women’s 4x400m, and a silver in the individual 400m. She is from Mumbai, competes for Maharashtra, and holds a B.Com from Thakur College.

There is a second career running alongside it that most athletes never manage. Her own bio calls her a fitness creator, and the reach is not a rounding error: individual posts of hers have passed a million views. She has a partnerships inbox in her bio. The most-liked thing she has ever posted carries a caption that could be this magazine’s mission statement: **be the reason why other women think they can do it too.**

She has also been unusually clear about how she stays fresh. She has spoken about deliberately treating herself like an ordinary person between blocks of training, travelling and taking drawing classes, and she credits that mindset for the run at Dehradun. Athletes are rarely that honest about the off switch.

जन्मदिन की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएँ, ऐश्वर्या! ईश्वर आपको लंबी उम्र दे, और आने वाला साल और भी तेज़ हो। बधाई हो! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇮🇳