Tokyo Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra has strife for excellence ever since winning the historic gold medal for India. He has smashed the national record twice in a couple of weeks as he prepares in full flow for the upcoming events with an eye on the Paris Olympics. After four years Neeraj participated in the Diamond League and almost notched up the landmark 90m mark. He powered his javelin with full effort and it landed covering a distance of 89.94m.
While Neeraj Chopra finished with the second position, he was reasonably satisfied with his improvement with every event. He was only short of Grenadian javelin thrower Anderson Peters who crossed the 90m mark and claimed the first position.
After the event in Stockholm, Neeraj shared his thoughts in front of the media and highlighted how he is happy with his development and growth till now. While the 90m mark is still a target on his mind, he feels it will happen this year. He shared how he had no planning of crossing the landmark but he came so close to the target means a lot to him.
When asked about his performance, the Olympic champion shared, “Feeling very good, there was no planning that I wanted to achieve the 90m on the first throw. I had the mindset that I needed to give my best. Bas pura zor lagana hai yahi soch thi, kaafi badhiya thi first throw. The throw was very close to 90m and achieving personal best feels nice.”
Neeraj Chopra admits that when Anderson Peters crossed his mark and broke through the 90m range, he also felt that he should have matched him. But he shared how the body gets tired with each and every throw so it is difficult to reach that distance after a couple of throws.
“When Anderson Peters crossed 90m, I also felt that I should be able to cross that mark. But when everything is perfect and all things line up then only you can achieve that. In between when we give our full effort on every throw, the body gets tired and it gets tougher with every throw in the end,” added the Indian star.
People are crazy about Neeraj Chopra in India as there was a massive buzz around the sports fanatics looking for streams to watch their champion in action. On hearing this Neeraj feels happy that people are backing him. “I am happy that people are watching athletics and they are watching even online. There was a lot of Indian supporters who came to watch in the stadium in Stockholm as well. The Indian Ambassador was also here, feels good that athletics is doing so well in our country,” he concluded.
Neeraj Chopra has a lot of events lined up, the star javelin thrower will be expected to shine at the World Championship but before that he has an event in Oregon which is a pretty big event and will allow Neeraj to get familiar with the pressure that athletes feel at the big stages like World Championships or Olympics.
