India’s only realistic medal hope at the ongoing World Athletics Championships, Neeraj Chopra, will begin his campaign on Wednesday.
Neeraj, the defending champion, will have company from compatriots Yashvir Singh, Sachin Yadav and Rohit Yadav in the men’s javelin qualification round in Tokyo.
The Indian superstar is expected to face tougher competition this time with multiple challengers threatening to usurp his throne as the champion.
The biggest among them will be Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem, who had stunned the Indian and the world with a monstrous throw of 92.97m to clinch gold at last year’s Paris Olympics. The frontrunner for the title, however, will be Germany’s Julian Weber, the form thrower this season.
Weber, who has the world-leading throw of 91.51m this season, is also the reigning Diamond League champion.
Neeraj will be aiming to become the third male javelin thrower in history to defend the World Championships gold he had won in the 2023 edition, in Budapest.
Czech legend Jan Zelezny (1993, 1995), who is now Neeraj’s coach, and Anderson Peters (2019, 2022) of Grenada are the other two who have won the World Championships crown on two consecutive occasions.
Neeraj, however, will not be facing Nadeem on Wednesday as the two rivals have been placed in different qualifying groups. Neeraj is in Group A, which features Weber, Czech veteran Jakub Vadlejch and Keshorn Walcott among others.
Nadeem is in Group B, which also features Peters and Brazilian Luiz da Siva, who has the second-longest throw — 91m — this season.
Sachin is in Group A along with Neeraj, while the other two Indians are in Group B.
Neeraj and Nadeem haven’t contested against each other since the 2024 Paris Olympics. But the Indian has run into Weber multiple times this season, with the German enjoying a 3-1 head-to-head record.
Neeraj will be drawing confidence from the fact that he has been able breach the elusive 90m-mark (90.23m) this season. To win in Tokyo, however, he perhaps will have to do even better than that.
The Japan National Stadium in Tokyo is the same venue where Neeraj had famously won the Olympic gold in 2021. Will Tokyo once again gift him happy memories?
