New Delhi,(thestates.news) India’s Neeraj Chopra once again created history in the final of the World Athletics Championships on Sunday. The Javelin thrower, who won gold at the Tokyo Olympics, won the country a Silver medal at the World Athletics Championships in the US. He has become the first Indian male to win a medal in World Athletics meet. Prior to him, veteran athlete Anju Bobby George won the Bronze medal in 2003. Neeraj won the Silver in the fourth round with a Javelin throw of 88.13 meters. Grenada’s Anderson Peters won the gold medal in the second round with a Javelin throw of 90.46.
Neeraj did not get such success tournament-after-tournament in without sacrifice. To achieve this feat, Neeraj kept his distance from family members and social media for a long time. Neeraj lives in a joint family. Besides his parents, there are three uncles in the family. Neeraj is the eldest of 10 cousins in a 19-member family household.He needed money to get to the next level in this game. Financial condition of the family was not good that they could afford a Javelin worth Rs 1.5 lakh. Father Satish Chopra and uncle Bhima somehow accumulated Rs 7,000 and brought him a javelin for practice. He worked hard after that.
He came into limelight after winning the Gold medal at the Junior World Championships in 2016 with an under-20 world record of 86.48 m. After this Neeraj did not look back. Neeraj joined the army in 2017. He said his family supported him with great difficulty. He said it is a relief now that he is now able to support his family financially apart from continuing his training. All the ups and downs continued in Chopra’s life, there was a time when he did not have a coach. Despite this, Neeraj did not give up and practiced by understanding the tips of experts from YouTube channel, overcame all his shortcomings. As a teenager, Neeraj, who sweated it out at the Shivaji Stadium in Panipat, Haryana and fell in love with the sport on this ground.(HS)
