When Neeraj Chopra was still an overweight school kid in Khandra, he was caught in two minds. He already had a precocious ability to hurl spear-like objects long but his first love, thanks to his height — 5’11” even before reaching Class X — was volleyball.
“At 1.81m, the young school student,” the IAAF website wrote in 2016, “was taller than most other boys of his age, so he was often one of the first to be picked to play. It soon became his favourite after-school pastime.”
That changed after Jaiveer Singh, his senior, saw him during a game of volleyball. “Singh advised the 13-year-old to take up javelin throwing and Chopra took him up on that suggestion. Singh then began to coach Chopra and his protege quickly adapted,” the same IAAF article mentions. In the seven years since those days in Khandra, the 20-year-old has enjoyed a staggering transformation.
In 2011, he was just a child being teased by fellow students for his weight. In 2013, he became a national youth medal winner. In 2014, he broke the then national youth record. A year later he competed at the senior nationals and ended up fifth. In 2016, his world turned upside down. He became an overnight celebrity after breaking the junior world record en route a stunning gold at the Junior World Championships.
It’s obvious Chopra holds that moment pretty close to his heart. But it is also the moment when Chopra realised how good he can be if he started focusing on the sport full time. “Previously, I would train at my own pace,” the Commonwealth Games gold-medallist tells Express. “(After that gold at Bydgosczc in Poland in 2016), things changed. I think back to what I had before... my preparation has changed. Now, my focus also has improved.”
It’s one among a few keywords he keeps coming back to during the interaction. Focus. Preparation. Improvement. Training. He also throws in one phrase that best captures his mood two weeks before the start of the Asian Games. “Should not disappoint (my fans) in Jakarta.” It’s also a byproduct of the last two years he has had as a sportsman. Expectation and pressure have replaced hope. Whenever he has the 800g carbon-fibre rod in his right hand, a whole country expects.
That sort of pressure can be overbearing even if it’s a privilege very few athletes get to experience. But Chopra is cut from a different cloth. He doesn’t feel it and vows to not waste time thinking about it. “I don’t feel pressure and even if there is pressure, it aids me. It improves my focus. A sportsperson shouldn’t focus too much on pressure because it begins to occupy the mind more. (When that happens) the focus on performance reduces. Hence, it is important to have some self-confidence.”
It’s the kind of self-confidence that has pushed him into a place where few Indian athletes outside of cricket and badminton have ever seen before. It’s also his confidence that has caught the eye of some of the greatest men to have ever thrown a competitive spear. Julius Yego, who won gold at the 2015 Worlds and a silver at the 2016 Olympics, said Chopra is way ahead of him earlier this year. “He is a great talent. He has the qualities of becoming an elite thrower. He is way ahead of me.”
That’s a feeling that has been echoed not just by Yego but also by elite throwers up and down the field. That’s mainly because none of the modern-day greats — Thomas Rohler, Johannes Vetter and Tero Pitkomaki — were throwing 85m plus in their teens. Chopra, who has qualified for the Diamond League final, has been doing it on a consistent basis.
That, however, doesn’t make him an automatic favourite for the Asian Games. He will have to be wary of the threat posed by Asian record holder Chao Tsun Cheng, one of six active men to have thrown 90m or more. It’s a fact he acknowledges. “Yeah, there is one Chinese Taipei guy who threw 91.4m last year,” he said. “Another one from Chinese Taipei did 86 something around the same time. Apart from these two, there are good throwers from China, Qatar and Japan.”
Chopra, who knows he has to start throwing 90m to be considered among the elites, hasn’t set a timeframe within which to breach that landmark.“A throw of 87.43m (at the Doha Diamond League in May where he broke his own national record) is fine and may even be enough to win a big medal. But there may come a time where competition is very stiff and the top three throws will be better than that. I keep trying (but) I don’t have a fixed target that I should achieve this much in this time.
It’s how he has always approached his career. Even a few years ago, he didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing. “When I was new, I had no idea what I was doing this for. I had no target on mind.”
A year later, the man from Khandra went on to break the junior world record, and he hasn’t looked back since.
swaroop@newindianexpress.com