Neeraj Chopra wins Diamond League Finals: The 24-year-old Javelin thrower is now the Olympic champion, World Championships silver medallist and Diamond League champion and netizens are elated.
Locked out of competitions, India s track and field athletes losing ground
Neeraj Chopra in action at the 2018 Asian Games, where he won gold.
AP Photo/Lee Jin-man
On Tuesday this week, javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra posted a short video clip of a practice session on his Instagram page. 86.26, 86.87, 87.25, 84.90 First time over 85 in training is the caption of the six-second clip. The throws made at the National Institute of Sport in Patiala are particularly promising since the Indian says he has always thrown further in competition. But he doesn t look like he s getting any of that any time soon.
While Chopra has no option for now but to be satisfied with his training throws in an empty field, the rest of the world s throwers are heading back to full competition mode. India s struggle with the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that even with a little over two months to go to the Tokyo Olympics, the country s athletes are struggling to get crucial competition.
Neeraj Chopra s Nordic weapon: Breaker of storms, and national records
Neeraj Chopra.
It is perhaps a statement on just how lofty his own standards are at this point that Neeraj Chopra marked his reaffirmation in the Indian record books on Friday not with a burst of ecstatic celebration but more as if it were a matter of fact.
As he calmly posed for a steady stream of selfie seekers, it was with the patience of someone who understands that this is going to be a very normal occurrence when he takes to the field. There was only the slightest sense of bemusement that the record came off what he hadn t even considered, at the time, a particularly strong throw.