Neeraj Chopra, PVSM, VSM is a track and field athlete from India. He is the reigning Olympic champion, silver medalist in the World Championship, and the Diamond League champion in Javelin throw. He is the first Asian athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in Men's Javelin throw. A Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) in the Indian Army, Chopra is the first track and field athlete to win a gold medal for India at the Olympics. He is also the first track and field athlete from India to win at the IAAF World U20 Championships, where in 2016 he achieved a world under-20 record throw of 86.48 m, becoming the first Indian athlete to set a world record.

Chopra participated in the 2018 Commonwealth Games and the 2018 Asian Games, serving as the flag-bearer in the latter and winning gold medals in both. In his debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Neeraj won the gold medal with a throw of 87.58 m in his second attempt. As of 2021, he is one of only two Indians to have won an individual Olympic gold medal (the other being Abhinav Bindra), as well as the youngest-ever Indian Olympic gold medalist in an individual event, and the only individual to have won gold on his Olympic debut.

On 14 June 2022, at the Paavo Nurmi Games, he registered a new national record of 89.30m in Turku, Finland. Chopra eventually beat his own record by reaching 89.94m at Stockholm Diamond League in Sweden on 30 June 2022.

On 23 July 2022, Chopra won a silver medal at the 2022 World Athletics Championships with a throw of 88.13m, making him the second Indian to win a medal at a World Athletics Championships.

Early life and education

Neeraj Chopra was born in a Haryanvi Ror family in Khandra Panipat, Haryana. He has two sisters and his family is largely involved in agriculture. He did his schooling from BVN Public School. He graduated from Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College in Chandigarh, and as of 2021, is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts from Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar, Punjab.

Impressed with Chopra's performance at the South Asian Games and his future potential, the Indian Army offered him a direct appointment as a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) in the Rajputana Rifles with the rank of Naib Subedar. He accepted the offer and joined the army under sports quota.

Athletics career

Early training

After local children teased him about his childhood obesity, Chopra's father enrolled him in a gymnasium at Madlauda; he was later enrolled in a gym in Panipat. While playing at Shivaji stadium in Panipat, he saw some javelin throwers and began participating himself.

Chopra visited the Panipat Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre, where javelin thrower Jaiveer Choudhary recognised his early talent in the winter of 2010. Observing Chopra's ability to achieve a 40-metre throw without training and impressed by his drive, Choudhary became his first coach. Chopra learned the basics of the sport from Choudhary and a few more experienced athletes who had trained under a javelin coach in Jalandhar. He soon won his first medal, a bronze in the district championships, and then persuaded his family to allow him to live in Panipat while developing his abilities.

After training under Choudhary for a year, the 13-year-old Chopra was admitted to the Tau Devi Lal Sports Complex in Panchkula. The sports complex was then one of only two facilities in the state of Haryana with a synthetic runway. There, he trained under coach Naseem Ahmad, a running coach who made him train in long-distance running along with the javelin throw. As Panchkula lacked a specialized javelin coach, he and fellow javelin thrower Parminder Singh downloaded videos of the Czech champion Jan Zelezny and attempted to copy his style.[20] While initially at Tau Devi, Chopra typically achieved throws of around 55 metres, but soon increased his range, and in the National Junior Athletics Championships in Lucknow on 27 October 2012, won gold with a new national record throw of 68.40 metres.

International beginnings

In 2013, Neeraj Chopra entered his first international competition, the World Youth Championships in Ukraine. He won his first international medal in 2014, a silver at the Youth Olympics Qualification in Bangkok. He achieved his first throw of over 70 metres at the 2014 senior nationals.

In 2015, Chopra broke the previous world record in the junior category, throwing 81.04 metres in the 2015 All India Inter-University Athletics meet; this was his first throw of over 80 metres.

Chopra finished fifth at the 2015 National Games in Kerala, and received a callback for the national-level training camp as a result, leaving Panchkula in 2016 to train at Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports, Patiala. According to Chopra, his inclusion in the national camp marked a turning point in his career, as he received better facilities, a better quality diet and an improved standard of training from that available at Panchkula. According to him, training with national level javelin throwers boosted his morale. Chopra was also assigned his first dedicated javelin coach, 2010 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Kashinath Naik, but found Naik's training regimen too difficult and resumed training on his own after a month and a half.

Injury and recovery

Chopra missed the 2019 World Championships in Doha due to bone spurs in his right elbow, undergoing surgery in Mumbai on 3 May 2019, the day after the qualifying competitions for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics had begun. After a period of recuperation, involving meditation and rehabilitative training at Patiala and the Inspire Institute of Sport at Vijayanagar, Chopra travelled to South Africa in November 2019 for training under German biomechanics expert Klaus Bartoneitz. Previously, he had been coached by Gary Calvert and Werner Daniels.

After a 16-month hiatus, Chopra returned to international competition in January 2020 with a winning throw of 87.86 metres in the Athletics Central North West League Meeting in Potchefstroom, South Africa, which as a distance of over 85 meters qualified him for the Tokyo Olympiad.

After South Africa, Chopra travelled to Turkey for training, but was forced to return to India in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Owing to the pandemic and lockdown in India, Chopra spent the next year training at the NIS Patiala. In late 2020, the Athletics Federation of India and the Odisha state government aided the national javelin team by arranging a training camp at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar, which Chopra attended from December 2020 through February 2021.

On 5 March 2021, Chopra again broke his own national record with a throw of 88.07 m, which ranked him third-best internationally.

2020 Tokyo Olympics

On 4 August 2021, Chopra made his debut at the Olympics, representing India in the Japan National Stadium He topped his qualifying group for entry to the final with a throw of 86.65 metres.

Chopra won the gold medal in the final on 7 August with a throw of 87.58 m in his second attempt, becoming the first Indian Olympian to win a gold medal in athletics, and the first post-independence Indian Olympic medalist in athletics.

Chopra's medal gave India a final total of seven medals at the game, surpassing the country's previous best performance of six medals earned at the 2012 London Olympics. As a result of his performance in Tokyo, Chopra became the second-ranked athlete internationally in the men's javelin throw.

Chopra also became the second Indian to win an individual Olympic gold medal after Abhinav Bindra, who won the gold medal in men's 10 m air rifle in the 2008 Summer Olympics. He dedicated his win to sprinters Milkha Singh and P. T. Usha, both former Olympians from India.

According to some historians, Chopra is the first Olympic medalist in track and field for India, but this status is disputed. Both the International Olympic Committee and Indian Olympic Association officially recognise Norman Pritchard to have been the first Indian track and field Olympic medalist, having competed at the 1900 Paris Olympics, even though India was under British rule at that time.

2022

At the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland on June 14, Chopra won the silver medal with a new personal best of 89.30m and registered the new national record.

He broke his own national record with a throw of 89.94 m in the Stockholm Diamond League; though he finished to achieve silver medal in the competition.

In year 2022, Chopra With his throw of 88.13m on his fourth attempt in the men's javelin throw final in Oregon, Neeraj Chopra ensured himself a historic silver medal. This is India's only second medal at the World Athletics Championships after long-jumper Anju Bobby George's bronze in 2003.

He opted out from 2022 commonwealth games due to an injury.

On August 26, 2022, he won first place at the Lausanne Diamond League meet with a throw of 89.09m, and qualified for the Zurich Final and 2023 World Athletics Championships, Budapest in Hungary.

On September 8, 2022, Neeraj Chopra won the 2022 Diamond League final in Zürich, with a best throw of 88.44m. He became the first Indian to do so.

International competitions

NR−National Record
WJR−World U20 Junior Record
q−Qualification Round

Year	Competition	Venue	Position	Event	Notes
2013	World Youth Championships	Donetsk, Ukraine	19th (q)	Javelin throw (700 g)	66.75 m
2015	Asian Athletics Championships	Wuhan, China	9th	Javelin throw	70.50 m
2016	South Asian Games	Guwahati, India		Javelin throw	82.23 m
	Asian Junior Athletics Championships	Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam		Javelin throw	77.60 m
	World Athletics U20 Championships	Bydgoszcz, Poland	WJR	Javelin throw	86.48 m
2017	Asian Grand Prix Series	Jinhua, China		Javelin throw	82.11 m
		Jiaxing, China			83.32 m
		Taipei, Taiwan			79.90 m
	Asian Athletics Championships	Bhubaneswar, India		Javelin throw	85.23 m
	Diamond League	Paris, France	7th (10 pts)	Javelin throw	84.67 m
		Fontvieille, Monaco			78.92 m
		Zurich, Switzerland			83.80 m
	World Athletics Championships	London, United Kingdom	15th (q)	Javelin throw	82.26 m
2018	Offenburg Speerwurf Meeting	Offenburg, Germany		Javelin throw	82.80 m
	Commonwealth Games	Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia		Javelin throw	86.47 m
	Diamond League	Doha, Qatar	4th (17 pts)	Javelin throw	87.43 m
		Eugene, Oregon, United States			80.81 m
		Rabat, Morocco			83.32 m
		Zurich, Switzerland			85.73 m
	Sotteville Athletics Meet	Sotteville-lès-Rouen, France		Javelin throw	85.17 m
	Savo Games	Lapinlahti, Finland		Javelin throw	85.69 m
	Asian Games	Indonesia	NR	Javelin throw	88.06 m
2020	Athletics Central North West League Meeting (qualifying event for Summer Olympics)	Potchefstroom, South Africa	(q)	Javelin throw	87.86 m
2021	Meeting Cidade de Lisboa	Lisbon, Portugal		Javelin throw	83.18 m
	Folksam Grand Prix	Sweden		Javelin throw	80.96 m
	Kuortane Games	Kuortane, Finland		Javelin throw	86.79 m
	Olympic Games	Tokyo, Japan		Javelin throw	87.58 m
2022	Paavo Nurmi Games	Turku, Finland	NR	Javelin throw	89.30 m
	Kuortane Games	Kuortane, Finland		Javelin throw	86.69 m
	Diamond League	Stockholm, Sweden	NR	Javelin throw	89.94 m
	World Athletics Championships	Eugene, United States		Javelin throw	88.13 m
	Diamond League	Lausanne, Switzerland		Javelin throw	89.08 m
	Wanda Diamond League Final	Zürich, Switzerland		Javelin Throw	88.44 m