CHENNAI: Nestled in the Southern Hemisphere, Potchefstroom with its excellent training facilities, is turning out to be an ideal venue for players to train when winter sweeps across the Northern Hemisphere. Even for Neeraj Chopra, who prefers to start his training abroad after a well-deserved post-season break in around late November or early December.
The javelin Olympic and world champion is primed for another year of excellence culminating with the big-ticket event at the Paris Olympics in July-August. He has to defend his Olympic title and with great earnestness, he has got his fitness sorted and has slowly started to throw, lightly though. He has been training at the South African centre since December last year and will gradually increase his light throwing sessions.
Consistency has been one of Neeraj's greatest companions along with his coach Klaus Bartonietz and physio Ishaan Marwah. Ever since his Olympic gold in 2021, he has hardly faltered. Despite the injury, the 26-year-old had had an exceptional season last year.
The Tokyo Games champion had to pull out of the FBK Games after the Doha Diamond League last year and made a comeback at Lausanne DL in late June where he won the event. Then at the Budapest World Athletics Championships in August, he reigned supreme and ended the season with the Asian Games gold in Hangzhou. The 90m mark may have eluded him last year, but he is still the World No 1 in javelin.
With the importance of the season, Neeraj is working with one more person besides the coach and the physio — strength and conditioning coach Spencer Mackay from the United Kingdom. According to his team, Mackay has been helping him to get into shape for the gruelling season and has been with the athlete from the start of the off-season training season. Mackay, who is the head of strength and conditioning at Inspire Institute of Sport, had worked with Neeraj earlier when he had the elbow surgery in 2019. That's when coach Klaus also started to train him more regularly.
Neeraj started his season at Doha DL last year but it needs to be seen if he would begin at the same event this year too. According to his team, the off-season training is going really well and he looks in good shape. In fact, recently the Sports Authority of India (SAI), which has funded the 85-day training through Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), posted a video of Neeraj going through his training ritual where the emphasis again was on strength and conditioning.
As of now, the plan is to enter into a few competitions before the Olympics. He is looking to stay injury-free so that he remains in the best shape ahead of the Paris Games. Neeraj will finish his three-month training in South Africa in February and by March he is set to move base to Turkey. Even earlier, he had been training at Gloria Sports Arena in Antalya. From Turkey, he would most likely shift base to somewhere close to Paris for his final preparation. But the venue has not been decided as yet. Usually, plans are finalised after consulting all stakeholders — Athletic Federation of India, JSW Sports that manages him and SAI's TOPS.
Last year, he trained at National Training Centre in Magglingen, Switzerland and Saarbruecken in Germany, which is just a two-hour drive away from Paris, before Worlds. Earlier, he had trained in Paris, Upsala in Sweden, at Kourtane in Finland and even in England and US. Finding a venue for training during the Olympic season too will be tricky. For Neeraj though, with his enormous talent and success, this should not be a problem.