Neeraj Chopra scripts golden history at World Athletics Championships

Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra scripted history yet again on Sunday (August 27) when he became the first Indian to win gold at the World Athletics Championships with a best throw of 88.17m in the men’s javelin final in Budapest, Hungary.

In another first, three Indians finished in top eight, with Kishore Jena (84.77m) and DP Manu (84.14m) taking the fifth and sixth spots respectively. Never before did three Indians finish in the top eight of an event in the World Championships.

Contest with Arshad Nadeem continues

The 25-year-old Chopra dominated the competition and achieved his best throw of the day in his second attempt. He had a foul to start with, but then got 88.17m, 86.32m, 84.64m, 87.73m, and 83.98m.

Pakistan’s reigning Commonwealth Games champion Arshad Nadeem took the silver with his season’s best throw of 87.82m, while Jakub Vadlejch (86.67m) of Czech Republic got the bronze.

Chopra jumped to the top spot with his second throw, and from thereon, he led the field till the end. Nadeem also maintained his second position from the third round, after which it was 1-2 for the Indo-Pak duo till the end.

Chopra thus beat Nadeem once again, as the Indian also won gold in the 2016 South Asian Games. Since then, the two have competed against each other in more than a dozen events and Chopra always returned triumphant.

In elite club

Chopra has now become only the second Indian — after legendary shooter Abhinav Bindra — to simultaneously hold the Olympics and World Championships title. Bindra won the World Championships title when he was 23, and the Olympics gold at 25.

Chopra, who became the first Indian Olympic track and field gold medallist in the Tokyo Games in 2021, had won a silver in the 2022 edition of the World Championships.

Before him, legendary long jumper Anju Bobby George had won a bronze in the 2003 World Championships.

The Indian superstar also became only the third javelin thrower in history to simultaneously hold the Olympics and World Championships titles after the iconic Jan Zelezny of Czech Republic and Andreas Thorkildsen of Norway.

Zelezny clinched the Olympics gold in 1992, 1996, and 2000 while winning World Championships title in 1993, 1995, and 2001. Thorkildsen won gold in the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 World Championships.

Every title in kitty

With this feat on Sunday, Chopra has won every major title his sport has to offer. He has won gold in the Asian Games (2018) and Commonwealth Games (2018), besides four individual Diamond League Meeting titles (two each in 2022 and 2023) and Diamond League champion’s trophy last year.

He also became junior world champion in 2016 and won the Asian Championships title in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Indian men’s 4x400m relay team raised hopes of a historic medal after finishing second overall in the heats with the Asian record time of 2 minutes 59.51 seconds on Saturday. But, in the final on Sunday, the quartet of Muhammed Anas Yahiya, Amoj Jacob, Muhammed Ajmal Variyathodi, and Rajesh Ramesh could do no better than finish a creditable fifth with a time of 2:59.92.

Parul Chaudhary created a national record of 9 minutes 15.31 seconds while finishing 11th in women’s 3000m steeplechase final. The earlier record was held by Lalita Babar (9:19.76) who had finished eighth in the final of the 2015 World Championships.

The disappointments

Chopra’s gold on the last day of competitions brought cheers to the Indian camp after an underwhelming start. Except for the performances of Chopra, Jena, Manu, and Chaudhary, the men’s 4x400m relay team and Jeswin Aldrin (11th in men’s long jump final), the World Championships outing was mediocre for the remaining Indians.

Long jumper Murali Sreeshankar and 3000m steeplechaser Avinash Sable were tipped to be the best performers after Chopra but both failed to qualify for the finals in their respective events, much to the disappointment of the Indian camp.

In the 2022 edition, apart from the silver won by Chopra, five other Indians had made it to the finals.

In the last edition of the showpiece, Chopra was beaten by Anderson Peters of Grenada for the gold. The Indian had settled for a landmark silver then with a best throw of 88.13m in the final to become only the second from the country and first male track-and-field athlete to win a medal in the World Championships.

Peters, who had won gold in 2019 also, could not make it to Sunday’s final after failing to even touch the 80m mark in Friday’s qualification round which Chopra topped.