Neeraj Chopra, the new Indian Sports Rockstar

The stars did align for India as javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra won a gold yesterday at the Tokyo Olympics 2021. With this he became only the second Indian to win individual gold in Olympics, also the first track-and-field medal for the country.

 It’s unbelievable,” said Neeraj with his historical win claiming to have been unsure of a top podium finish despite a remarkably confident performance.

Chopra had topped the qualification three days ago and did better than that in the finals as he produced a best throw of 87.58m.

Beaming to the news channels with, Neeraj said, “It is the first time India has won a gold in athletics, so I feel very good. We have just one gold here in other sports,” the 23-year-old said after winning the historic gold.

“This is our first Olympic medal for a very long time, and in athletics it is the first time we have gold, so it’s a proud moment for me and my country.”https://twitter.com/neeraj_chopra1?lang=en

Winning against German  Johannes Vetter, he said, “In the qualification round I threw very well so I knew I could do better in the final.”

“(But) I didn’t know it would be gold but I am very happy.”

As his personal story goes. It was just by chance that Neeraj took to this game. A plump kid took to athletics to lose weight and ended up being India’s first track-and-field Olympic gold-medallist.

Chopra was under tremendous pressure from his joint family of 17 to lose weight.

He was all of 13 at that point and had become a mischievous boy, often fiddling the bee hives on village trees and trying to pull buffaloes by their tails.

His father Satish Kumar Chopra wanted something to be done to discipline the boy.

So, after a lot of cajoling, the child finally agreed to do some running to shed the flab.

His uncle took him to Shivaji Stadium in Panipat — around 15km from his village. Chopra wasn’t interested in running and almost instantly fell in love with javelin throw when he saw a few seniors practising at the stadium.

He decided to try his luck and  rest is history. This is definitely good news for a country like India, who is starved of gold medals at the Olympics. We need more sports heroes to inspire our kids  our school textbooks.

He has been a consistent performer with his  historic gold in the junior world championships in 2016 with an Under-20 world record of 86.48m which still stands.

P T Usha congratulates Neeraj Chopra

Standing out among the millions of Indians congratulating Neeraj Chopra for winning India’s first Olympic Gold in athletics was India’s legendary track and field athlete PT Usha, who came agonisingly close to winning a medal in 400M hurdles at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. In an exclusive interview to NDTV, the former Olympic athlete said “Indian athletics has waited long for an Olympic medal, we all had a dream and came close, but Neeraj did it. I am very happy. Also proud of the way our women athletes performed. Sindhu and women’s hockey team fought very well.”

Meanwhile, Neeraj himself dedicated his Olympic gold  legendry sprinter Milkha Singh, who died of Covid in June this year. He told the liveMint.com  “Milkha Singh wanted to hear the national anthem in a stadium. He is no longer with us but his dream has been fulfilled,” Chopra said while dedicating his gold to the iconic sprinter who had finished fourth in the 1960 Rome Olympics.