How Neeraj Chopra Overcame the Odds to Win a Gold Medal, and what it means for Indian Athletics

By Mustafa Jafri

December 2021

In the past 2021 Olympics, Neeraj Chopra was able to capture India’s second-ever individual gold medal after winning in Men’s Javelin. More impressive than the medal is his story, Chopra had to overcome many trials and tribulations to reach his historic victory. Despite financial issues and a serious elbow injury, Chopra overcame the odds and led his country to a gold medal. His story can help kickstart a new wave of Indian athletes as the country has had repeated failure in their recent Olympic history.

Rising to the top of an Olympic sport is no easy feat, Chopra had to overcome a surplus of adversity. He was born in the Panipat district in Haryana, India. He comes from a joint family of 17 that was largely involved in agriculture. At age 13, Chopra was mischievous and overweight. His father tried to get him into running so that he would be disciplined and he would lose weight. He would bring Chopra to the Shivaji Stadium in Panipat, but Chopra never found a true passion for running. Instead, he fell in love with javelin throwing after watching a few seniors throw it around.

It was clear from the instant he picked up the Javelin that Chopra was a prodigy. He was kept into the sport by a coach named Jaiveer Choudhary who started training Chopra in 2011. In search of better facilities, Chopra then started training at the Tau Devi Lal stadium in Panchkula. By just the end of 2012, he had become the under-16 national champion. In 2013, Chopra participated in the World Youth Championships in Ukraine but he was unable to bring home a medal. The very next year, he won silver at Youth Olympic Qualifications in Thailand. It was clear that Chopra was competent at the world stage, he was not a beneficiary of weaker competition in India.

At this point, Chopra’s level of play was no longer financially viable for his family since agriculture wasn’t a highly-funded government job. In 2015, he was sent to the national javelin camp of India.

“When I was selected for the national camp after the national games in 2015/2016, it was a turning point in my sports career. Before that I used to cook myself, we trained proper but the good facilities I only got after coming to the training camp.” Chopra said at a felicitation program organized by the Athletics Federation of India (ADI). The ADI is responsible for holding competitions across the country. They held a felicitation to honor the athletic successes of Indian athletes in the past Olympics on August 10th, 2021.

“There was a different feeling of training amongst the best athletes in the country. I just worked hard and the result is here.” Chopra added.

Following his training at the camp, Chopra burst onto the scene when he took gold in the 2016 Junior World Championships. He heaved the javelin 86.48 meters, an under-20 record that still stands today. Chopra then went on to add to his impressive collection of accolades, winning gold at the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games. In 2016, he was an Arjuna Awardee, an honor only given to the top athletes in India. To contextualize this, Virat Kohli, who many consider to be the best cricket player in the world, was a recipient of the Arjuna Award.

Neeraj Chopra with his gold medal at the Commonwealth games.

In 2018, Chopra wanted to further enhance his game to suit the Olympic level, so he decided to train with Uwe Hohn in Germany. Hohn was a successful Javelin thrower in his playing days and Chopra figured that working with him would take him to the next level. However, the training didn’t go according to plan. Chopra describes the struggles of training with Hohn and how he eventually decided to train with someone else.

“My technique did not match Hohn’s training. It wasn’t going well, which is why I chose Klaus Bartonietz as my coach. He arranged my training to suit my body type.”

Chopra’s decision turned out to be a massive success. Despite an injury to his throwing elbow that held him out for the entirety of 2019, Bartonietz predicated Chopra’s rehabilitation in a way that would see him peak just in time for the Olympics. Chopra withdrew from the Diamond League games in London to continue training in Sweden with Bartonietz. Despite the uncertainty that COVID-19 presented, Chopra was able to continue preparing for the Olympics, despite the fact that the Olympics had been postponed by one year.

On August 4th, 2021, Chopra participated in the Men’s javelin qualifying event. If Chopra made the top 32 in the qualifying event, he would have a chance to participate in the main Olympic event, a chance at securing his nation’s second-ever individual gold medal.

What happened at the qualifiers was unprecedented. Chopra needed just one throw of 86.65 meters to qualify for the main event; nobody could top his score for the entire event.

On August 7th, 2021, Neeraj Chopra participated in the main Olympic event. With the weight of an entire country on his shoulders, he threw for 87.03 meters on his first throw and 87.58 meters on his second. Nobody could outperform those tallies as the runner-up, a Czech javelin thrower named Jakub Vadlejch, threw for 86.67 meters. The heavy favorite coming into the event, Johannes Vetter, threw for 82.52 meters, despite having thrown for 90 meters on 7 separate occasions in the past year. Clearly, August 7th was not Vetter’s day, and Chopra took full advantage of that. Chopra had won his nation a gold medal, an accomplishment India has not been able to celebrate for the past 13 years.

Neeraj Chopra at the Men's Javelin final on August 7; (Photo by Ben Stansall/ AFP)

Chopra with his gold medal on August 7; (Photo by: Martin Meissner/ AP)

Chopra’s win is such a big deal for Indian athletics because of its track record of Olympic failure. Take for example Vinesh Phogat, an Indian wrestler and serious medal prospect in the 2021 Olympics who decided to train with a personal trainer in Hungary named Woller Akos. He proceeded to ask his wife, another wrestler, to start training with Phogat, which she wasn’t expecting. When the Olympic Games were just around the corner, Phogat refused to train with the Indian wrestling team and she didn’t wear the patch for the sponsor of the Indian team. The Wrestling Federation of India is responsible for organizing all official wrestling events in India. Its president Brij Bhushan Singh Sharan, had this to say about Phogat’s incident:

“You tell me, what is this obsession with foreign coaches? What (wrestling) tradition does Hungary have that we don’t? Athletes do not understand this, and they get bad advice. Vinesh made a very bad decision.”

Credit: Twitter Photo

Examples like this are what holds Indian Athletics back. Chopra did not repeat the mistakes of his predecessors, rather he learned from them and built upon it. For example, Chopra was not enamored with foreign athletics, he trusted the system in India and only traveled abroad when the opportunity presented itself; he didn’t force his training with Hohn and Bartonietz. When Chopra felt that Hohn wasn’t the right trainer for him, he didn’t hesitate to seek a new coach, something Phogat wishes she would’ve done. Another example is Milkha Singh who had the talent to win a medal, but he never had the infrastructure to receive proper training.

To further demonstrate the importance of this win, the Haryana government (the state that Chopra is from), announced that it would reward Chopra with a six crore (roughly $809,000) prize. The chief minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, had this to say about Chopra when he held a meeting with him in Chandigarh, Haryana.

“The country was waiting for this moment for a long time,” he addressed to the crowd that had gathered. “The whole country is proud of him.”

The former chief minister of the Indian state Punjab Amarinder Singh chimed in on Twitter, showing his support for Chopra.

““Gold! Neeraj Chopra… you have created history and made the whole country proud," he tweeted. “Your 87.58 m winning throw today will be part of the legends of the Track and Field arena. India owes you!” he added.

Chopra’s accomplishment serves one main purpose. It is a model to the aspiring athletes in India. Even though there has been a lack of Olympic representation from India, Chopra’s win shows that Indian athletes are capable of representing their country on a global stage. Chopra learned from the mistakes of his predecessors and he managed every difficulty in his career properly. His story can help pave the way for the new generation of Indian athletes. Chopra’s story should not be an anomaly, it should be the norm for Indian athletics.

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