Neeraj, affable global champ, seeks a repeat

Paris: It’s only when you step inside the cauldron that is the 80,000-seater Stade de France packed to the rafters that you realise how global the Olympics, and its heartbeat of track and field, truly is.
There are a couple of athletes from Somalia hanging around outside the arena. There are three Ukrainians winning medals on the same evening and speaking emotionally about giving joy to their war-hit nation. There’s a fan from Denmark cheering on for Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen. There’s American Noah Lyles doing Noah Lyles things.
It’s here that an Indian has chiselled his way to an acclaimed status in an aspirational sport for millions across different corners of the world. It’s here that an Olympic champion from India, still as hardly believable as it sounds, returns in his quest to do further barely imaginable things.
Neeraj Chopra begins his 2024 Paris Olympics on Tuesday with the qualification round of the men’s javelin throw, an event he had made his own at the Tokyo Olympics.
From Tokyo to Paris, Chopra, older by three years and richer by two World Championships medals, hasn’t changed the way he looks at his sport and the immense dedication it demands. What has changed, however, is how the world of athletics looks at the 26-year-old Indian.
Going into Tokyo as an Asian Games and Commonwealth Games champion, Chopra became an Indian phenomenon with that gold. It boosted the stocks of athletics in the country and his own popularity and marketability.
Coming into Paris as the reigning world champion and a recurring presence in elite Diamond League meets, Chopra has evolved into a global face of javelin. It transcends nationalities and cuts across the spread of events in athletics.
“I think with his Olympic victory and the other successes, he brought more attention to the javelin throw and athletics,” Max Dehning, the 19-year-old sensation from javelin-rich Germany, told HT in a chat. “He is one of the most famous athletes there is.”
At the Sportcampus Saar in Germany’s Saarbrucken where he camped last month in the company of more than 400 athletes from around the world, Chopra was the star sighting. At the Athletes’ Village in Paris where he checked in last week, Chopra’s presence turned into the “lucky charm” for the rest of Indian contingent. In Doha where he opened his season in May and visited a local school, children flocked to Chopra to catch a glimpse.
Speaking before the Doha Diamond League, Miltiadis Tentoglou, the reigning Olympic long jump champion from Greece, brought up Chopra when asked about his own dream distance. “I will be really happy if Neeraj throws 90m,” Tentoglou, a track and field star in his own right, said as Chopra smiled seated next to him.
Part of Chopra’s far-reaching appeal is his affability. Ukraine’s Kokhan Mykhaylo, the Games’ hammer throw bronze medallist of Sunday night, was an emotional man after winning a medal for his friends still duty bound amid the war and for his country gripped in continued fear. Amid those poignant thoughts, he remembered the dining room greetings and chats with Chopra when they land up in the same international meets.
“We know each other. We talk between our competitions. In the dining room, we always say “good luck” to each other. And then also “good job” later. He’s a good guy. He’s very kind. You can always talk with him,” Mykhaylo, 23, said.
When Chopra won the Tokyo gold, Dehning was still “observing” from afar the way top javelin throwers like Chopra go about their medal-winning business at that level. The teenaged German, whose rapid rise this year was headlined by that 90m throw early in the season, finally met Chopra in person and as a competitor in June this year at the Paavo Nurmi Games. In the prestigious meet where Chopra finished on top and Dehning seventh, the youngster took away a few lessons and some warming cream from the “world star”.
“I found it very interesting to start in the same field with the world star. You can learn a lot from him when it comes to being calm,” Dehning said.
“Neeraj is an athlete who is very interested in you and also happy to help. I sustained an injury during the competition and the first person who came to me was Neeraj. He asked if everything was okay and even gave me some warming cream.”
Like Chopra, Mykhaylo too spends most of his training time away from home. His training base is in Antalya, Turkey, a place Chopra too often visits. “We were once together in a training camp,” Mykhaylo said.
While the Ukrainian has been forced to train away for the last couple of years due to the situation at his home, the Indian likes to detach himself from the attention he gets back in India.
Now that Mykhaylo has got the medal he came for in Paris, he genuinely hopes Chopra gets it too.
“I wish him good, good luck to secure his Olympic title here,” Mykhaylo said. “He’s a great guy and I know he can do it.”
He did do it in Tokyo three years ago, through a glittering medal that painted a country gold and pinned the humble Indian’s evolution to worldwide stardom. What does Paris have in store for javelin’s global face?