At the Nemzeti Atletikai Kozpont in Budapest on Sunday night, Neeraj Chopra completed the last major victory an athlete can hope for. After throwing his javelin a distance of 88.17m, Neeraj pressed his head to the ground as he celebrated besting the best of the field at the World Athletics Championships.
At 25, he has completed one of the fastest speed runs of international athletics and is certainly the quickest in his event. His resume now reads like something out of an athlete’s fever dream — Junior World Champion in 2016, Asian Champion in 2017, Commonwealth Games Champion in 2018, Asian Games Champion in 2019, Olympic Champion in 2021, Diamond League Winner in 2022 and now World Champion in 2023.
This World Championships, Neeraj says, was perhaps tougher than the Olympics he won a couple of years back. He had come to Budapest having only competed in two competitions this season after hurting his groin in the first. Before every throw, Neeraj would stretch out into a lunge. He would gingerly feel out his inner thigh. “When you are coming back from an injury you are always thinking about it,” he would say.
