Neeraj Chopra returns to action in highly-competitive field at Paavo Nurmi Games-Sports News , Firstpost

Neeraj Chopra in a file photo. AP

Olympic champion Neeraj Chopora returns to competitive action for the first time since his Tokyo Olympics triumph as he competes in the Paavo Nurmi Games in Finnish city Turku on Tuesday night. The competition being ratified by World Athletics as a Continental Tour Gold event (Grade A tournament) means that the 24-year-old Indian javelin star will face some of his toughest rivals with the field being arguably as tough as Olympics.

While Neeraj’s personal best of 88.07m – also a national record — came more than a year ago at a domestic event in Patiala, he hasn’t gone beyond the 88m mark since then as his next best throw since then has been the Olympic gold winning throw of 87.58m last August.

This was followed by a long off-season as the nation celebrated their new star before Neeraj moved to Chula Vista in the USA with his coach Bartonietz Klaus for a four-month training stint from December to March-end. Upon completion, his training camp was shifted to Antalya (Turkey), where he trained in the company of some of the best throwers and coaches in the world, including world record holder Jan Zelezny.

Neeraj faces tough competitors

As far as tonight’s competition is concerned, Chopra will have to be at his best if he wants to show the world why he is the Olympic champion. Four of the throwers competing have measured throws more than Neeraj’s personal best while two of them are beyond the 90m mark.

Neeraj’s biggest adversary Johannes Vetter is missing from the event but current World No. 1 Anderson Peters leads the pack with the season best of 93.07m exactly a month ago at the Doha Diamond League. A week back, the Grenada athlete also breached 90m mark again with a 90.75m throw during FBK Games in Holland, where he had a close battle with Germany’s Julian Weber (89.57m) and Keshorn Wallcot (89.7m); both throwing their season bests.

90-plus throws, however, could be a rarity at tonight’s event as the best throwers would like save their best for Diamond League events and the World Championships. A clear impression of that comes from the performance of Olympic silver medallist Jakub Vadlejch, who threw 90.88m at Doha Diamond League while competing with Peters but has dropped his performance by a notch as his throws at the last three events since then haven’t gone beyond 85.50m, and that could be the case tonight as well.

Apart from these rivals, eyes will be also on Germany’s other star thrower Andreas Hoffmann (personal best of 92.06 in 2018), who is on a comeback trail since missing last year’s Olympics and has thrown his season-best of 87.32m 10 days ago in Austria.

What to expect from Neeraj

Competing for the first time since the Olympics, fans have every right to be skeptical of a big throw tonight. Also, the temperature in Turku is quite cold with the mercury dropping as low as 18 degree Celsius and is not an ideal reading for a sub-continental athlete.

Neeraj has been training in Antalya since April and has the knack of throwing big early in the season, something which was evident in 2020 and 2021. Competing for the first time since his prolonged elbow injury, Neeraj threw 87.86m in Potchefstroom to qualify for the Olympics. In 2021, he improved his Asian Games national record throw of 88.06m with a throw of 88.07m in the Indian Grand Prix 3 in Patiala, which was again his first competition of the year. He threw 87.80m 12 days later at the same venue in Federation Cup.

Indian fans can enjoy the highly-competitive action on the new sports channel Sports18 1 and Sports 18 1 HD from 10:20 PM IST

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