Neeraj Chopra - The Making Of A Champion

The inspiring story of how Neeraj Chopra battled injury and other odds to give india its first athletics gold in over a century of participation at the olympic games

- Boria Majumdar

INDIAN TRACK & FIELD ATHLETES are no strangers to early exits from Olympic arenas, not counting the storied near misses of Milkha Singh, P.T. Usha, and Anju George. Even those ‘almost-there stories are too few and far between. The question we got tired of asking was why a nation of a billion-plus can not produce a track & field medal.

On the day of his qualification for the finals of the men’s javelin event, Neeraj Chopra too left the stadium early. But his was the stride and demeanor of a man who had unfinished business. He had made short work of the qualification, with a monstrous first throw of 86.65 meters (the qualifying mark being 83.50 meters), topping the qualification charts and becoming the first Indian to make the final of the men’s javelin event. As he left the stadium, you could see a certain bounce, a slight swagger in his walk, but there wasn’t a trace of arrogance in it—this was self-belief.

On the day of the final, again, he effortlessly slipped into the zone. Watching him up close, in that trance of self-assured immersion, was quite an experience. Anticipation began to build the moment he completed his first throw—87.03 meters! But we had seen victory slip away many times in Tokyo, so we held our breath. Besides, there was in the fray a man called Johannes Vetter—the German had seven 90+ metre throws under his belt in 2021 alone, and a personal best of 97.76 metres (2020)!