If you're a sportswriter who focuses on sport outside cricket in India, all you will hear over the next few days is this question: 'Who else is going to win a medal for India?' As the 2024 Olympics nears, that's all anyone wants to know. 'Who else?'
'Else?' Well, everyone just assumes that India will have at least one medal. Of course, he will get one, there are no doubts. You know him. If you're an Indian and you think Olympics, the first two words that pop up in your mind are his name.
Don't believe me? Try it. Close your eyes and transport yourself back to August 2021. Visualise the scene: The Tokyo National stadium, a man in a blue sleeveless T running full pelt, wavy hair bouncing along, a javelin ripping through the fabric of the night, a streak of colour that lights it up. Even now, three years later, you can hear the roar; it speaks to your soul in a way few things have.
A medal? Of course he's going to win gold.
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Neeraj Chopra goes into Paris as that unheard of species, a defending Olympic (and World) track and field champion from India: Aside from the hockey players of yore, only one other Indian has gone into an Olympics with gold dangling around their neck, but even the great Abhinav Bindra wasn't so widely expected to win it a second time around. Chopra is.
It's not an exaggeration to say that in the three years since he won Olympic gold, Chopra has transcended from mere athlete (however good) to phenomenon.
Witness history as Neeraj Chopra secures India's first track and field Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020!
Celebrate India's second individual Olympic gold since Beijing 2008. ������ #NeerajChopra | #Tokyo2020 | #Olympics | #GoldMedal | @Neeraj_chopra1 pic.twitter.com/r6RmwjrB0B
- The Olympic Games (@Olympics) April 29, 2024
Because of Chopra, India is a javelin nation now. August 7, the day he won gold in Tokyo, has been named national javelin day. According to the Athletics Federation of India, there were 3000 U-16 athletes in the javelin event at the National Inter-Districts junior athletics meet this year. At the 2023 World Championships, India had become the first nation ever to have three athletes compete in the finals of the men's javelin, and they finished inside the top six. It could have been three in Paris too, were it not for a failed drug test. From the base of the pyramid to the apex, javelin is everywhere. It's gone from that funny little sport you sometimes saw during your school's sports day to a national obsession.
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Everything Chopra does is celebrated on a scale unprecedented for athletes who aren't cricketers. Everywhere he goes there's a rush of fans (who want selfies, autographs), administrators (who want facetime, and sometimes Instagram reels), fellow athletes (who want to touch the greatness he has shown an Indian athlete can achieve), or media (who want a sound bite or a video clip that will push their engagement).
At his first competition in India since Tokyo, he was blanketed so completely by sponsors desperate to get ad shoots done in the two days he was there that one shoot was done right after he competed. Chopra is the face of the Indian Olympic campaign and is a poster child for World Athletics. From 143,000 followers on Instagram pre-Olympic success, he now has 8.9 million -- the most for an active Indian sportsperson who doesn't play cricket, and the most for an (active) track and field athlete anywhere in the world. He reps 21 brands, endorses Switzerland tourism, and is front and centre in anything athletics related anywhere.
Success in Tokyo was a surprise for the vast majority. Success in Paris is expected.
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If those expectations seem massive, it's only because of the standards he's set himself - and the performances he's been churning out since Tokyo. They say it's tough going from very good to the best, but even tougher staying there: Chopra has embraced the challenge. Instead of fading away, or buying into the publicity and becoming a celebrity, Chopra has been almost frighteningly consistent in his throws. And the results have only burnished his reputation.
Every single time you hear his name it's because he's won something or the other. He's competed in 17 events since Tokyo and won 11 of them. The other six times, he finished second. In those events, he's only dipped below 85m once (and he was throwing at about 60% in that one, and still won it). It's a ludicrous level of consistency at a level we've never seen before.
He knows it too. "Before Tokyo, I was just happy to participate in some of these competitions and didn't mind if I came fourth, fifth or sixth," he says. He very much minds it now, though. After becoming the first Indian to win a silver at an athletics World Championships in 2022, he said "yeah, but it's not gold." After winning gold in 2023, he said, "To win a medal does not mean we have won everything. Many athletes have won the same medal multiple times. I will push myself to win these medals again."
Neeraj Chopra is one of us, but he's also the best of us
It's a constant process that he keeps at regardless of what he's doing. "When I'm free, listening to music or traveling, I keep thinking about what I am preparing for and working towards, where I had begun and how far I have come," he says. "The more I think about it, these things get ingrained in my mind, and it helps me produce really good results whenever I compete".
Not everyone understands the specifics of what he does, or how he does it. There are those who deep-dive into javelin because of Chopra, people who try to understand the basic physics and biomechanics of this ancient movement turned modern sport. The 30m run-up. The velocity Chopra acquires during it, maxing out at (around) 36 km/h. The blocking leg absorbing 8-10 times his bodyweight at the time of launch. The importance of the pre-launch cross-step, which helps him uncoil his massive frame like a loaded spring. The (ideal) 36 degrees angle the 800gm carbon-fibre Valhalla javelin gets launched at. But even if all you knew about the sport is that you run and throw a pointy stick as far as you can, Neeraj Chopra is still the man. He is, in the collective Indian mind, the ultimate athlete.
There's something else that makes him unique, especially in symbolism-obsessed India: His nonchalance over the 90m milestone, javelin's hallowed milestone. The greats aspire to throw 90m; Chopra targets whatever distance will win him the event. "I am not obsessed with [the 90m mark]," he says. "Sure, I want to cross 90m but... in major competitions there are often multiple 90+ throwers, the main challenge is at that time, in that pressure, moment, weather and on that day, who wins. That's what matters.
"For me, the main priority whenever I compete is to win. If that happens below 90m, so be it. There's no use if you throw more than 90m and still don't win or finish on the podium".
The clarity of focus and thought: 'All I want is to win'. Everyone tries to do it, but only the truly elite can pull it off.
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Can he do it in Paris?
It won't be easy.
Look at the raw numbers. In the list of athletes set to compete in Paris, six have personal bests better than him. Another five are less than 80cms away. In the tournament in which Chopra hit his personal best of 89.94m, he finished second. This is a rare bunch here, a field of athletes as tight as you'll see in any sport at the Olympics.
His biggest competition will come from the man he beat to gold on that damp Tokyo night. Jakub Vadlejch took the Diamond League trophy off Chopra last year, finished third in the World Championship and hasn't finished outside the top three in 19 events across the past two years. While there are a few who can hurl a javelin further, it's the Czech who comes closest to Chopra's absurd consistency of results.
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Behind him is a star-studded pack. There's Arshad Nadeem, the gentle giant from Pakistan whose action is the opposite of Chopra's: almost a slow, casual jog that culminates in him using pure shoulder strength to hurl the javelin forward. There's Anderson Peters, the man who relegated Chopra to silver in the 2022 World Championships with three (out of six, remember) throws above 90m in the final. Both have PBs better than Chopra, but neither are in peak form. Where Nadeem has had a succession of niggles that's kept him out of most major competitions over the past year, Peters is yet to recover to 100% after a horrific assault aboard a yacht back home in Granada two years ago. But they're both big-game performers, and they're both well on their way back to their physical best.
There is no Johannes Vetter -- the man whose personal best, at 97.76m, dwarfs everyone else's, who once passed 90m at seven different tournaments in one year (2021) -- but Germany has strong representation, as always. There's young wunderkind Max Dehning, who'll be out to prove his 90.20m from earlier this year wasn't a flash in the pan. The 19-year-old will be joined by compatriot Julian Weber, whose PB is 40 cm short of Chopra's.
There are others too: former world champion Julius Yego of Kenya, Finland's Oliver Helander (whose PB is one centimetre short of Chopra's) and Lassi Eletalo, and former Olympic champion Keshorn Walcott. None of them have beaten Chopra anytime recently, though.
They are all a close band of super athletes, having regularly thrown alongside each other for the past few years now. Nadeem and Chopra in particular share a strong bond, two South Asians taking great pride in pulling down such a European dominated bastion. They revel in each other's achievements and applaud on final throws... but when it comes to taking on each other on the field, they don't back down, not an inch.
If nothing else, Chopra's title defence against this bunch will make for compelling viewing.
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Off the field, Chopra isn't your average champion, either. On two very public occasions he, and his mother, have taken strong stands against hatemongering against Nadeem and his nation. He's tweeted out against the injustice meted to the wrestlers protesting against the establishment. He's spoken about the importance of having more readily accessible public infrastructure, and coaches to go with them.
On a personal level, he's always been there, ready to lend a hand (or an ear) for those trying to follow in his footsteps. From the little things to the not-so-little, it shines through.
At the Olympic gold felicitation ceremony that JSW had organised at their IIS facility in Bellary, Chopra slipped away from the VIPs after a while to spend some time with the young athletes at the hostel there. Last year, ahead of the World Championships, he helped Kishore Jena when he had visa issues. At the Asian Games, he was Jena's biggest cheerleader. He's in constant touch with the young javelin throwers who want to clamber up along the footholds he's placing along the way. At the Federation Cup this year, his first competition on Indian soil after Tokyo, he made sure to greet and speak to any athlete who walked up to him, even if it meant he had to pause his warmup routine.
If that's the tangible, the intangible Neeraj Effect (TM) is more, so much more.
Long-time friend Tejaswin Shankar, the high jumping decathlete, talks about how Chopra's mentality has seeped into those around him. As does star long jumper M Sreeshankar, who has spoken on many an occasion about just how motivating it is when someone of Chopra's stature reaches out to them after a big event -- whatever the result.
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AFI president Adile Sumariwalla says, "The rest of them have now started to believe that if a Neeraj Chopra can do it -- (the fact that) he stays with us, he eats the same food, he is (of the) same flesh and blood, he sleeps in the same room as we do. If he can do it, we can do it also."
Or as Sreeshankar puts it, "there has been a big paradigm shift in the mindset of the athletes, thanks to Neeraj bhaiya, because of his gold we are also learning to think big and high."
From elite athletes, that's slowly seeping into the national conscious: 'Hey, maybe Indians do belong in this rarefied air, maybe we're not here just to participate.' It's the kind of power over mind space that only the greatest cricketers used to hold in the Indian psyche. And it would appear Chopra has gone even a step above. When he was called to give the team-talk for the junior women's cricket team ahead of their World Cup final, it marked a massive shift. Cricketers motivate others, but here was a track and field athlete doing it to them. That never used to happen in India... but it is now.
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Chopra may not grasp the enormity of all this, of his achievements and his influence, but recently whenever faced with a dilemma (like when he's injured, or hasn't done as well as he could), he's made a deliberate effort to sit back and remember just how far he's come. From the chubby little farmer's kid fresh out of Khandra to proper national icon... "Jitna jo bhi hua hain, woh bhi kahan socha tha [All that has happened (in my career), who would have thought this was possible?]."
- Neeraj Chopra (@Neeraj_chopra1) July 8, 2024
It sounds oxymoronic, to have this peace of mind and this hunger for more, but that's what makes for a champion.
And Neeraj Chopra is just that, a champion. He's already great... whatever happens in Paris, his place in Indian sport's hall of fame is assured. But what's gotten him so far is what drives home the feeling that it's not enough: we know it, they know it, he knows it. Come August 8, the country rests assured in the knowledge he'll be going flat out to make sure an entire nation soars as far as his Valhalla does.
Which is why the question is, "Who else will win a medal for India?"