Golden boy Neeraj Chopra guns for rare Olympic double

New Delhi: A day after India’s Olympics campaign was jolted by the dramatic disqualification of wrestler Vinesh Phogat ahead of her 50kg final, Indian athletics’ golden boy Neeraj Chopra will take the field in Paris’ Stade de France. He will be hoping to not just create history by becoming the first Indian athlete to win multiple individual gold medals at the Olympics but also to lift the sombre mood of a nation.
Elite athletes like to stay in their bubble, unaffected by the turmoil outside. Wednesday, August 7, which marked three years of Chopra’s seminal gold in Tokyo also brought about a cruel blow of fate for Vinesh.
The in-form competitors won’t make it any easier for the Indian but the field-leading qualifying throw of 89.34m will stand him in good stead in the big final. Chopra recorded the second-best throw of his career on Tuesday for his typical ‘one and done’ routine before nonchalantly walking off, showing little signs of the adductor niggle that has troubled him this season. His effort was also the second-best qualifying throw at an Olympics after the 89.39m registered by the legendary Jan Zelezny at the 2000 Sydney Games.
Two-time world champion Anderson Peters (88.63m) of Grenada was second, followed by Germany’s Julian Weber (87.76m). Reigning Commonwealth Games champion Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan will also be high on confidence after an impressive 86.59m while Tokyo silver medallist Jakub Vadlejch of Czech Republic, the only man to have beaten Chopra this year, at Doha Diamond League, recorded a throw of 85.63m. The marker was set at 84m.
Not one to be carried away, Chopra was quick to remind everyone that the final will be a whole, different proposition. While the qualification was played in the afternoon when the temperatures were in lower-20s (degrees Celsius), the final is going to be contested under much cooler, windier evening conditions.
“It’s going to be a little bit cold, and definitely, the mindset for the final will be different. It will be a good and stiff competition,” the 26-year-old had said on Tuesday.
Among the 12 finalists, five have breached the 90m mark at least once in their careers while eight, including Chopra, have gone past 89m. This season though, none of them have managed to hit 90m. Chopra’s Tuesday effort is also the season-leading mark among the finalists and second-best of the year overall with German wonderkid Max Dehning being the only competitor in the field to cross 90m this year.
Chopra might love to get a big throw early and put the field under pressure, but the reigning Olympic and world champion has shown to have the required reserves to mount a late charge. His Eugene World Championships silver and Hangzhou Asian Games gold were secured deep into the contest, and Chopra is known to take immense pride in his 2017 Asian Championships gold medal that he won on his last throw after being outside the medal contention until then.
The season has seen Chopra carefully picking his events — he has competed in only three events this year, the last being Paavo Nurmi Games two months back — and skipping the Ostrava Golden Spike Meet in May in Czech Republic after he “felt something” in his adductor.
The season has also witnessed him tweaking his training regimen to add power. “Early this season, Neeraj realised that he was perhaps lacking a bit of power and he felt the need to work towards it. That is something, he thought, was keeping him from hitting that 90m mark,” said Ishaan Marwaha, his physiotherapist. That meant a carefully calibrated training plan devised by Spencer Mackay, head of strength and conditioning at Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS). MacKay reckoned that Chopra needed to get stronger by “10-15 percent,” and so he introduced heavier lifts to his regimen.
“We wanted him to get stronger but not at the cost of his flexibility, which is his greatest strength. He is not a power thrower but an elastic thrower with great technique. That’s also the secret of his consistency,” MacKay, who had worked with Chopra during his rehabilitation from the elbow surgery he underwent in 2019, said. The process was gradual, and Chopra and his team were mindful of his recurring groin strain.
Gradually, his snatches and clean and jerks improved by 1.5 times as Chopra began lifting closer to his bodyweight at speed.
“Heavy lifting is one thing and lifting heavy at speed is another. We wanted him to get quicker with the bar, which he did. It shows his explosive power has gone up and hopefully it’ll be translated in his performance,” the Englishman said.
The increment in weights stopped two months before the Olympics as the focus shifted entirely to technical refinement. Chopra spent the final phase of his training in the south-western German training centre of Saarbrucken before moving to Gloria Sports Arena in Antalya, Turkey.
On Thursday, Chopra will have a shot at becoming only the fifth man in Olympic history to defend a javelin crown. Sweden’s Eric Lemming (1908 and 1912), Finland’s Jonni Myyra (1920 and 1924), Czech Republic’s Jan Zelezny (1992, 1996, 2000), and Norway’s Andreas Thorkildsen (2004 and 2008) are the only ones to have won back to back gold medals in the competition. A medal will also make him only the fourth Indian to win multiple medals at the Games, placing him alongside shuttler PV Sindhu, wrestler Sushil Kumar, and shooter Manu Bhaker.
Trust Neeraj to not care about the rest and just do what he does best.