Neeraj Chopra has ended his 2024 season with yet another second place finish, this time in the Diamond League final. It's a repeat of the finish he had in this competition in 2023, as he was unable to recapture the trophy he won in 2022.
Of all the second place finishes this season (Paris Olympics, Doha Diamond League, Lausanne Diamond League), none were as close as this: His best throw of 87.86m was just 0.01m (or 1cm) short of Anderson Peters' winning throw of 87.87m.
Grenada's Peters set that mark on his very first throw, a standard that no one was able to touch. Germany's Julian Weber also had his best throw of the night on his first attempt, hitting 85.97m to finish third. Andrian Mardare (82.79m), Roderick Genki Dean (80.37m), Artur Felfner (79.86m) and Timothy Herman (76.46m) rounded off the standings.
Neeraj, meanwhile, never looked in full flow during the final.
Struggling with a groin injury since before the Paris Olympic Games, he barely cracked a smile as he remained behind Peters through the night. Frustration evident, much like night of the Games final, Neeraj roared in his trademark style just once: on his final throw, but when he saw where it had landed (86.46m), the frown quickly returned.
It's a mark of the champion that he is that these second place finishes gnaw at him, that it visibly upsets him... this is an athlete performing consistently at a level no Indian has before.
Now it's time to regroup and go hard again in 2025, when he will be gunning to defend his World Championship title against a roaring Anderson Peters who's comeback from serious injury has been the stuff of legend and, of course, reigning Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem.
It won't be a straightforward task, though. During the Paris Games, Neeraj had said that he would be undergoing major surgery to address the groin issue that's been afflicting him for a couple of months now and it's a procedure that will take quite a few months to fully recover from. The first half of next year, then, is likely to be spent in rest and recovery if he does go ahead with the surgery.
Earlier, the only other Indian at the Diamond League Final -- Avinash Sable -- finished ninth in the 3000m steeplechase at the King Baudouin Stadium on Friday.
You can relive Neeraj Chopra's final event of 2024 in our blog right here: