World Athletics Championships: Gladiator then, conqueror now: What next for Neeraj Chopra?

Gold medallist India’s Neeraj Chopra celebrates on the podium with his medal after winning the final.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

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.

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Neeraj has got a new resolution for his next competition. “The main thing is to understand my body again. Maybe I push myself a lot in competition. That’s why I get injured,” he says. “I was feeling something in my groin today, but I was thinking ‘this moment comes every two years, even if it breaks, I have to put in my full effort’. I think I need to change that mentality.”

There will have to be a compromise. Neeraj thinks he might not need such an all-or-nothing approach in tournaments like a Diamond League. “I want to tell Indians — I know you expect that I always win, but if I lose, I want you to forgive me, because that is also important. This is something new I need to try,” he says.

By this, he is talking about his chase for the 90m throw. Neeraj is confident he will get that mark eventually but for that he wants to have more fun this time around. “If I speak of how I competed in the qualification, I was mentally very relaxed. My technique was smooth, I was throwing at the right angle. That’s the sort of body language I want in the final also,” he says.