Eyes on Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal win at the World Championships

India’s javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra’s medal haul is just short of a World Championship gold and the superstar will now be eyeing to make up for it in the competition starting on Saturday.

Chopra (25 years) won gold medal in Tokyo Olympics 2021. After winning gold medals at the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games in 2018, he also became the Diamond League champion last year. Chopra had won a silver medal at the 2022 World Championships in the US and will be among the contenders for the gold medal this time as none of the participants can be called a strong contender here.

If Chopra wins the gold medal at the World Championships, he will become only the second Indian after shooter Abhinav Bindra to win gold in an individual event at the Olympics and World Championships. Bindra became the first Indian to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event in 2008, having achieved the top podium position in the 10m air rifle event in Zagreb in 2006.

Going by the current form of the top javelin throwers, no one can be called a strong contender for the final to be held on August 27. The qualification will be held two days before that. Chopra has played in only two top level events (Doha and Lausanne Diamond League) this season and won gold medals in both. In between these two events, he also took a month’s rest due to injury.

After nearly two months of rest and training, Chopra said she is ready for the big event, which has the same status as the Olympics. Other contenders for the gold medal include Jakub Wadlech of the Czech Republic, Julian Weber of Germany and defending champion Andersen Peters. Chopra, who won gold with a throw of 88.67m in Lausanne, is third in the world list but enters the world championships having beaten his nearest trio (Wadlech, Weber and Peters) in both Doha and Lausanne.

DP Manu and Kishore Jena are also the other two Indians competing in the men’s javelin throw event. Jena’s visa was canceled by the Hungarian embassy on Thursday but was approved on Friday. Medals in the other events cannot be ruled out in the men’s long jump with Jesvin Aldrin (8.42m) and Murali Sreesankar (8.41m) leading the world charts this season.

Aldrin had a spectacular jump in Bellary in early March but has struggled to touch eight since then. He won the Sitius competition in Bern, Switzerland with a throw of 8.22m. Sreeshankar has been far more consistent than them. He did a personal best of 8.41m in Bhubaneswar in June and is entering the World Championship after a jump of 8.37m (silver medal) at the Bangkok Asian Championships.

In the men’s 3000m steeplechase, national record holder Avinash Sable will be hoping for a top-class performance from the star-studded contingent. He will be in the heats on Saturday. India’s campaign will begin on Saturday with the men’s 20km walk in which Akashdeep Singh, Vikas Singh and Paramjit Singh will compete, although they are unlikely to medal. There will be no Indian in the women’s 20km walk as Bhavna Jat was repatriated for ‘failure to report location’.

On the first day of competition, Shaili Singh will compete in the women’s long jump event while Ajay Kumar Saroj will compete in the men’s 1500m heats. Three Indians Praveen Chitravel, Abdullah Abubakar and Aldos Paul will take part in the qualification of the men’s triple jump event.

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