In one of the most thrilling men's javelin finals of all time, Neeraj Chopra won the silver medal behind an Olympic record by Pakistan's Arshad Nadeem, to become independent India's fourth multiple medallist at the Olympic Games.
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SSuch was the level of competition that Neeraj's winning throw in Tokyo (87.58m) would've placed sixth here. Particularly on the second round of throws, the competition exploded into life, as Nadeem first broke the Olympic record with a massive throw of 92.97m. That laid the gauntlet down for the rest of the field, and it remained far ahead of the rest of the field, as Nadeem ended up winning by a margin of 3.52m over Neeraj.
After fouling on his first throw, Neeraj came out for the second attempt after Nadeem's big throw and ended up throwing the second biggest throw of his life - 11cm more than what he threw in qualification, and 49cm behind his personal best of 89.94m that he threw in 2022.
Neeraj then deliberately stepped over the line on his third and fourth throws as he didn't quite like the marks that he had set. On his fifth, he pushed himself a little too much and crossed the line for another throw that didn't count. His last wasn't good enough either, and then Nadeem just put the exclamation mark on his historic night with a stunning last throw of 91.79m.
Neeraj eventually only registered one throw on the board, fouling out the remaining five. It just wasn't his night, but perhaps it's a tale of just the athlete that he is, that an Olympic silver medal - his second consecutive medal - felt like a bit of an underperformance.
In the end, Neeraj still won India's first medal other than bronze at these Olympics, while it was Pakistan's first Olympic medal since 1992, and their first-ever individual gold medal in their history.
Anderson Peters of Grenada won bronze, a superb culmination to his story following that World Championship win in 2022, which was followed by a mishap on a boat, that left him injured and well below his best through all of 2023.
Tokyo silver medallist Jakub Vadlejch finished fourth, Rio silver medallist Julius Yego finished fifth, and Germany's Julian Weber finished sixth - all with throws more than 87m, which pointed to what an outstanding final it was.
It was a fitting competition between two incredible athletes, Neeraj and Nadeem once again laid down a marker of how the power centre in world javelin has well and truly moved to South Asia.