Neeraj Chopra: A Champion with No Limits

IT WAS THE MORNING AFTER Neeraj Chopra had broken the 90-metre mark in Doha. I called Murali Sreeshankar, India’s long-jump star on a comeback trail, around 10AM and asked if he had watched the Neeraj event. I was aware Sreeshankar is expecting to start competing from end-June and has also been in touch with Neeraj. As the conversation got going, I asked him what makes Neeraj special. There was a brief pause. And then he got going.

“He is the greatest athlete India has produced. The beauty about him is how he breaks things down. He had once said to me that for us athletes the dream is never over. He said unlike cricketers and footballers, for whom the World Cup is the ultimate dream and once they win that the final dream is fulfilled, for us it is the distance that keeps on driving us. Now that he has broken the 90m mark, he will aim for 91m or 91.5m, and so on. For me it is about 8.30m and then 8.31 or 8.32m. The goal keeps changing and that’s what drives us. If you look at it this way, you know he has already moved past the 90m obsession,” said Sreeshankar.

It was inevitable that I would ask him if he thinks Neeraj can continue to chase excel­lence and be a force in LA2028.

“Two hundred per cent. There isn’t an iota of doubt he will be there and win. He is like the greatest athletes of the world. In the same league as Mondo Duplantis, for example. For these people it is the process. Neeraj will keep challenging himself and you can be rest as­sured he will want to go one better in compar­ison to Paris,” said Sreeshankar.

Before I could ask him a follow-up question, he had started again. “Neeraj has been an inspiration to us all. He talks to each one of us and motivates us to aim higher. If he can, why can’t we, is what he keeps saying. He has been a constant source of inspiration during my comeback,” Sreeshankar concluded.

Adille Sumariwalla, vice president of World Athletics and former president of the Athletics Federation of India, said something similar: “You can’t judge Neeraj by the number of titles he will win or the number of medals he has won. His real impact is the legacy he is leaving for Indian sport. He has helped us raise the bar. He is the bar. If he can, why can’t the others? Why can’t every athlete chase excellence? You should see him speak to everyone else and you will know what I mean.”

And yet, in all of this, Neeraj has stayed humble. The boy next door who never be­haves like he is a global superstar or a dou­ble Olympic medallist. But that doesn’t mean he is happy with all that he has achieved and wants to rest on his laurels. Let me try and explain this in some detail.

It was the day after his competition in Paris2024 and Neeraj was supposed to do an event at Omega House in Paris, his spon­sors for a while now. We had agreed on do­ing an interview and he had arrived exactly as planned. However, something seemed off. Clearly he wasn’t happy with the way things had gone in Paris and something was bother­ing him. While he went ahead with the inter­view as a professional, having known him for years now I could sense he was disappointed with himself. Going in as the favourite to win gold, the silver wasn’t something he was hap­py with. For India, however, it was the biggest medal. No other Indian had won a silver and Neeraj had yet again done the country proud. While the other medal winners all came back to India with much fanfare, Neeraj did not. He went to Switzerland for the Diamond League and only returned a month later. It was his way of distancing himself from all the cel­ebrations. It is tough for him to say no to things back home and the only way was to not return on time.

For the next few months we hardly heard from Neeraj. He issued a statement during the India-Pakistan conflict when his family and his mother had been trolled. A very mat­ter of fact statement putting things in con­text. Backstage, however, he had silently gone about his job. He knew he had to recalibrate and reboot and get better. Figure out the small issues that had crept into his performance and address them at the start of the next season. He identified Jan Zelezny as his next coach, a man who has thrown the javelin more than 90m a record 52 times. There is no throw­er better than Jan in history and it was fitting Neeraj had chosen the best. It was a statement. That Chopra, despite an Olympic gold and a silver and a world championship title, was still seeking to get better. As he had once told me, “Michael Phelps has 26 Olympic medals. I have two. Let me try and win a second gold and then you can call me the best ever. I am not yet there.”

Under Jan Zelezny, Neeraj has made some minor tweaks to his technique and the results are for all to see. The 90m mark has been breached and it is just the start of the season. He is all set to compete in a few more Diamond League competitions before going to Tokyo in September for the World Championships. That’s the big one. Javelin is an extremely competitive field and Neeraj will be ready. Ready for Arshad Nadeem and ready for the world. It was in Tokyo that we had started to see the Neeraj legend unfold in 2021. The Olympic gold made him India’s best ever. And it will yet again be Tokyo where he will be fighting to be the best in the world.

Tell him this and he will brush it off. He will say that, in the context of human life, elite high-performance sport is a small recreation. He will hail the Indian Army and play his own achievements down. He will also say it is about the next event and the next competition. That’s his way of trying to stay within his comfort zone. But come Tokyo he will be prepared. He knows that all of India will be watching him and wanting him to win. He is Neeraj Chopra after all and for him India brooks no failure. In giving his best, he would be doing one thing over and over again. Keep raising the bar and keep inspiring. If he can, others can. A champion in the truest sense.

90m markDiamond LeagueDohajavelin throwerNeeraj Chopra