Diamond League: Neeraj Chopra to start the season as champion from Doha stage

Doha. Competing for the first time as Diamond League champion, star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra will once again be up against his familiar rivals when he takes the field in the first leg of the prestigious event on Friday. The long season begins with the Doha leg of the Diamond League and Neeraj would be looking to start the season with a strong performance. The 25-year-old World Championship silver-medallist will face the likes of world champion Andersen Peters of Granada and Tokyo Olympics silver-medallist Jakub Wadljech of Czech Republic at the Qatar Sports Club here.

Neeraj’s personal best performance is 89.94m which is also a national record. He had finished fourth with 87.43m in 2018 in his only participation at the Doha Diamond League in 2018. Neeraj could not participate here last year due to lack of ‘overall fitness and strength’. He became the first Indian to become the Diamond League champion after winning the 2022 Grand Finale in Zurich last September. A month earlier, he had become the first Indian to win the Diamond League meet in Lausanne. Neeraj had said last month that he is feeling better physically and technically at the moment but it will not be easy for him to win the top prize in the season-opening Diamond League considering the extremely tough competition here last year.

Neeraj, who won the first gold medal in athletics for India, aims to touch the distance of 90 metres. Whether he manages to do so in the first contest of the season remains to be seen. 2022 Commonwealth Games triple jump champion Eldhoj Paul will also challenge in the Doha meet. Tokyo Olympic champion Pedro Pichardo, Cuba’s Diamond League winner Andy Diaz Hernandez and two-time Olympic gold medalist (2012 and 2016) and five-time world champion Christian Taylor of the United States are competing in the event. Paul has a personal best of 16.99m, so it will be tough for him to break into the top three. He won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games (Birmingham), however, with a distance of 17.03m with the help of the wind.

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