Neeraj Chopra, who won India's first Olympic gold at the Tokyo Olympics 2020, is looking to end India's drought at the World Athletics Championships on Thursday (Friday morning in India). India had won the only medal at the World Athletics Championships in 2003 when Anju Bobby George won the bronze medal in the long jump event. Now top javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra is all set to enter the competition after 19 years as India's medal hope.
In his golden career, Neeraj has won medals in Olympics, Asian Games, U-20 World, Commonwealth Games and Diamond League. The World Championships is the only important event where he has not been able to win a medal so far. This time, it is also being speculated to achieve this feat from them in a big way. Neeraj, who started his 2022 season last month, has broken the national record twice in three competitions.
He started this season by winning a silver medal at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Finland, breaking the national record. After which he won a gold medal at the Kuortane Games, while in the Stockholm Diamond League, he has again broken the national record and finished second with a throw of 89.94 m. A total of 32 javelin throw players are scheduled to participate in the two qualifying groups. The 12 best players are going to qualify for Saturday's final.
The automatic qualification point for the final is 83.50m and Chopra is going to try to get it without any hassle. Neeraj is set to face reigning Grenada champion Anderson Peters, who has also crossed the 90m mark three times this year. Oliver Helander of Finland, Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Jacob Waddles (Czech Republic), Julian Weber of Germany and London Olympic champion Keshorn Walcott will be the other star throwers who are going to give a tough fight to the reigning Olympic champion.
Neeraj is scheduled to participate in the World Championships for the second time. The 24-year-old had failed to qualify for the finals in the 2017 edition in London. He could not attend in 2019 due to elbow surgery. Apart from Neeraj, another Indian young javelin thrower Rohit Yadav is also going to take part in the competition.
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