The young 23-year-old Indian prodigy hopes to leave his mark on the international pitch of Tokyo. He wants to fulfill the dream of a nation that has been starving for success in sports. Will Neeraj Chopra be defeated under the weight of pressure to win a gold medal? Or will the first-time Olympian turn the dreams into reality by winning India’s first gold medal in athletics?
India has a proud Olympic history with its men in blue displaying their hockey skills for decades, bagging 12 medals, 8 of them gold. Despite that rich history, India had only one individual gold medal to share among its 140.76 crore citizens. It was won by Abhinav Bindra in the field of shooting in Beijing 2008. However, India came very close to winning that coveted gold many times.
In Rio 2016 Olympics, PV Sindhu had made it till the finals. Every Indian had thought that PV Sindhu will win the second Olympic individual gold medal. And she was so close to victory. But was a hard 2-1 fight and PV Sindhu lost. Many other athletes like Vijay Kumar, Sushil Kumar, Ravi Kumar Dahiya, Merabai Chanu etc. were about to grab that victory but they couldn’t. All hopes were then on Neeraj Chopra. That was a lot of pressure for a farmer’s kid, who had not even seen the javelin before the age of thirteen.
When Neeraj was a kid, he struggled with his weight. Knowing exercise would help, his uncle took him on a track field where he picked his first javelin and found his passion. Not much later, he was a superstar athlete, carrying the dreams of the nation on the tip of his javelin. He started to work harder then. Unfortunately, hard work and injuries are like two sides of a coin and go hand in hand for an athlete.
For Neeraj, it was an elbow fracture. The tissue inside the elbow was broken. His only option was surgery. That forced his Olympic dreams to wait for another year and 4 months. Then in 2017, Neeraj promised on Instagram to win the Olympic gold medal. In January 2020, he reserved a spot for himself in his first Olympic that is Tokyo 2020.
After Tokyo was delayed due to the covid pandemic, Neeraj was finally able to enter some warm-up events. But on his way, he encountered travel issues. His visa was rejected due to the changes in travel restrictions. It took 3 months for him and the government to clean up the mess.
Instead of having months to prepare for Tokyo, the time was down to only a few weeks.But nothing could have stopped him as he stepped into the finals. On his second throw, he threw the javelin 87.58 meters away. Neeraj completed his four-year-old promise and fulfilled the Indian dream of winning the Olympic gold medal.
His golden moment in Tokyo would always be remembered in the history of Olympics. After he threw the javelin in the second throw, the javelin hadn’t even reached the ground when he turned. He raised his arms like he knew that he would win the Olympics and he did.
By: Navya Phogat
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