Neeraj Chopra - Biography

Subedar Neeraj Chopra is an Olympic gold winner in javelin throw and an Indian track-and-field athlete. Neeraj was born on the 24th of December in the year 1997. His gold medal in the Olympics made him the first track and field sportsperson from India to have accomplished this. He is part of the Indian Army, working as a Subedar/Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO). He also acquired a win in the IAAF World U20 Championships in 2016, when he achieved a new world under-20 record throw of 86.48 meters, making him the first Indian track-and-field athlete to do so. He has a height of 178m and weighs 86 Kg.

About Early Life and Origins

Neeraj Chopra belongs to a Ror family in the Panipat district of Haryana. He was born in Khandra Village. Neeraj’s family was majorly only involved in agricultural activities. His family consists of himself, his two sisters, Sangeeta and Sarita, his mother, Saroj Devi, and his father, Satish Kumar Chopra. He completed his graduation in Chandigarh from the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, after which he decided to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar, Punjab.

About Career

Training and National Competition

His family always used to persuade him to join some sports because he was overweight. Later on, his father got him enrolled in a gym in Madlauda at first but later at Panipat, where Neeraj met the javelin thrower, Jaiveer Choudhary. He used to play at Shivaji stadium in Panipat, where he saw and got enticed by the javelin throwers, which made him decide to participate himself. He visited Panipat Sports Authority of India, and his talent got recognition from Jaiveer Choudhary. Jaiveer was left impressed by Neeraj’s ability to throw 40-meters without any sort of training whatsoever and became his first coach. He learned many basics of the sports from his coach and some of the other experienced athletes and not long after he took part in the district championships and brought with him his first even medal - a bronze medal. He convinced his family to let him train further and continue to live in Panipat.

From then on, he continued to train under Jaiveer, although later on when he was 13 he got admitted to Tau Devi Lal Sports Complex in Panchkula. Back then, Haryana had only 2 facilities and this sports complex was one of them. He started to train under a running coach Naseem Ahmed. His day consisted of training in long-distance running and javelin throw. Panchkula lacked a specialized javelin coach, which posed a problem for Neeraj. Hence, in order to learn more and enhance their skills further, he and one of his fellow javelin throwers named Parminder Singh started downloading videos of Jan Zelenzy- a Czech champion and tried to simulate his style. Neeraj showed significant growth from his early days at Tau Devi, where he could throw about 55 meters, to set a new national record of 68.4 meters at the National Junior Athletics Championships in Lucknow on 27^th Oct 2012, which earned him a gold medal.

International Competition

World Youth Championships in Ukraine (2013) was Neeraj Chopra's first-ever international level competition. However, his first victory in an international completion came with a silver medal in 2014 at the Youth Olympics Qualification that took place in Bangkok. In the same year, he established his personal best throw of over 70 meters during the senior Internationals. A year later, in the All India Inter-University Athletics meet, he broke the junior category world record by throwing 81.04 meters. He continued to participate in more competitions and got multiple wins. Although he failed to acquire a medal and finished 5^th at National Games (2015) in Kerela, he got a call back for a national-level training camp. He then left Panchkula in the year 2016 to take up the offer and joined Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala to continue with his training. This was a turning point in his career; he received higher standard training, a better diet, and better facilities. It was stated by Neeraj during an interview that training with national-level javelin throwers helped in boosting his morale and the better facilities enabled him to progress more. He received his own personal coach who was Kashinath Naik – a bronze medalist from the 2010 Commonwealth games, although he only trained under him for about over a month as he found the training routine to be too difficult for him to keep up with and from there-on continued training on his own.

Junior World Champion (2016)

On the 9^th of February in the 2016 South Asian Games, Neeraj Chopra broke his previous personal best record. This happened during the athletics finals that took place in Guwahati; he threw the javelin 82.23 meters, which earned him a gold medal. However, his throw was not good enough for the 83-meter Olympics qualifying mark. He felt the need for a coach that month and began to train under Gary Calvert, who was an Australian coach.

During the same year, he broke the ceiling for not only his personal record but for the World Junior Record as well by making a throw of 86.48 meters in the IAAF World U20 Championships (2016) in Bydgoszcz, Poland. This feat made him the first Indian athlete to have set a world record. His score in the U20 was even higher than that of the defending Olympic Champion named Keshorn Walcott. Sadly, Neeraj failed to qualify for the summer Olympics in 2016 regardless of his score, as the date for cut-off (11^th July) had passed a week before U20 Championships took place. In April 2016, he took part in the Federation Cup in New Delhi, India. He ended up getting a back injury during this competition and his performance got noticeably hindered. This posed a problem for him as it wouldn't be possible to perform well in any other competitions with his injury. As such, he had to call off his preparations for the Rio.

Nevertheless, his impressive performance during the south Asian games earned him an offer of direct appointment as a Junior Commissioned Officer(JCO). He got the rank of Naib Subedar in the Indian Army, which was impressive on its own, considering that it's one of the ranks not usually directly offered to athletes. He received subsequent leave from the Indian Army in order to continue his training.

2017-2019 Career Development

He took part in the Asian Athletics Championships in 2017 and came out as a gold medalist with a throw of 85.2 meters. He decided to take part in the World Championships held in August and went to London to participate, although he ended up getting eliminated from the competition before he could reach the finals. Next up came the Zurich Diamond League, Neeraj worked his way to the finals of the competition, but during that time, he suffered a significant groin injury, he tried to throw while sustaining the injury; however, he fouled one of his attempts and skipped two allowed throws owing to the injury. When the competition ended, he got placed seventh due to his first and best throw (83.8 meters). He withdrew from participating in the competitions for the remainder of his recovery period. After his recovery, he spent a month at Joint Services Wing Sports institute situated in vijaynagar. After spending a month there, he left for Offenburg, Germany.

During his time spent at the 2017 World Championships, he had worked briefly with Werner Daniels. At Offenburg, he chose to start training under Werner since his previous coach Gary Calvert had left in May because of some disputes over his contract. He trained under Werner for three months. During this time, his focus was on strength training and, with the help of Werner, improving his technique since he had some trouble keeping his hand raised when doing higher throws which used to limit his throwing capabilities.

Neeraj Chopra made his mark in the 2018 Commonwealth games by registering a season-best of 86.47 meters and became the first Indian to have won the javelin throw at the commonwealth games. Later in the year, he broke the national record at the Doha Diamond League in May with a javelin throw of 87.43 meters. 2 months later, in August, he debuted in the Asian Games and represented India in the competition. He was also the flag-bearer for India during the 2018 Asian Games Parade of Nations. On 27^th August, he won the gold medal in the competition with a throw of 88.06 meters and broke his own national record. This gold medal earned by him was India's first one in the javelin throw at Asian Games.

He even got recommended by the Athletics Federation of India for the Major Dhyanchand Khel Ratna award, which is the highest level sports award, although he did not get it, he was later awarded with Arjuna Award in September. In November 2018, he got rewarded by the Indian Army and was promoted to Subedar. From that point to 2019, he started training under a German coach Uwe Honh in order to prepare for the 2020 Olympics. He got bone spurs in his right elbow, which caused his performance to suffer greatly and prevented him from participating in any competitions at all; he underwent surgery on 3^rd May, 2019 in Mumbai. For the sake of his recovery, he had to go on a 16-month long hiatus from competitions, but he continued his training for the time under Klaus Bartoneitz - a German biomechanics expert, who started training him in November 2019.

The Olympics (2020)

In January 2020, Neeraj Chopra returned back into competition. He made a throw of 87.86 meters in the Athletics Central North West League Meeting in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Since the qualifying mark was 85 meters, he successfully qualified for the Tokyo Olympiad. He then traveled to Turkey to continue with training, but this was the time when COVID-19 struck due to which, he ended up returning to India. On March 3^rd, 2021 he became the third-best javelin thrower in the world with a throw of 88.07 meters, breaking the national record yet again.

Neeraj Chopra finally made his debut in the Olympics and represented India at the Japan National Stadium. He not only made it to the finals, but he also was the top scorer of his qualifying group with a throw of 86.65 meters. He marked history on 7^th August in the finals of the Olympics, where he scored a throw of 87.58 meters earning him a gold medal and breaking India's last best score of six medals in 2012 by making the total medals seven. On this day, he became the world's best 2^nd ranked athlete in men’s javelin throw. He even earned the title of being the first Indian athlete to have won gold in the Olympics post-independence. He was the second Indian Olympian to have won a gold medal, the first one being Abhinav Bindra. He also broke India's 13-year long-awaited gold medal and the National Anthem at the Olympics.

Later on, during the Felicitation Ceremony, he thanked to everyone for the support and said that it would never have been possible otherwise. He dedicated his gold medal to the nation saying it doesn’t belong to him alone. Neeraj admitted to feeling anxious, not being able to eat or sleep properly ever since getting the medal and having it with him all the time but everything feels good for him once he looks at it. He further added that the competition was really difficult, but one should never get scared by looking at their opponents and that we should always give our 100% without feeling scared of anyone or anything. He had back and shoulder pain the next morning after the Olympics event.

About later life

Shortly after Olympics, he had to be briefly admitted into the Panipat hospital because of him developing a fever, this also caused Neeraj to end up missing a lot of the celebrations. A month after he had won the Olympics, he fulfilled another dream of taking his parent on a flight. He was on a private plane on his way to Inspire Institute of Sports (IIS) in Bellary, Karnataka due to an event that was being organized by his promoter. He shared that it was his parents' first ever flight and was very delighted to have fulfilled that dream. He had multiple other people onboard as well, including Klaus, the biomechanics expert who helped him train, and Tokyo Olympian Satish Kumar.

 He stated in an interview that ever since the Olympics, his life had changed quite a bit, but he was the same person inside and that everyone should remain the same too. He had to travel quite a bit after the Olympics were over. As a result of his brief illness and travel schedules, he declared on 26^th August 2021 that he was going to cut his season short, and instead of participating in competitions, he will be using the time to rest well and prepare further for the competitions in 2022 like the Asian Games, the World Championships and Commonwealth Games. For a month after that, Neeraj was on a break from his training and later decided to resume his training in October 2021. He is currently set for his return for the soon-to-come national and international competitions in 2022.