Neeraj Chopra

Neeraj Chopra (born 24 December 1997) is an Indian track and field athlete, who is the reigning Olympic champion and World champion in Men's javelin throw.

He is the first Asian athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in javelin and the first Asian to win gold in his event at the World Championship.

A Junior Commissioned Officer Subedar (JCO) in the Indian Army, Chopra is the first track and field athlete to win a gold medal for India at the Olympics.

Chopra visited the Panipat Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre, where javelin thrower Akshay Choudhary from Ghaziabad and Neeraj practised early talent in the winter of 2010.

Observing Chopra's ability to achieve a 40-metre throw without training and impressed by his drive, Choudhary became his first coach.

Chopra learned the basics of the sport from Choudhary and a few more experienced athletes who had trained under a javelin coach in Jalandhar.

He soon won his first medal, a bronze in the district championships, and then persuaded his family to allow him to live in Panipat while developing his abilities.

After training under Choudhary for a year, the 13-year-old Chopra was admitted to the Tau Devi Lal Sports Complex in Panchkula.

The sports complex was then one of only two facilities in the state of Haryana with a synthetic runway.

There, he trained under coach Naseem Ahmad, a running coach who made him train in long-distance running along with the javelin throw.

As Panchkula lacked a specialised javelin coach, he and fellow javelin thrower Parminder Singh downloaded videos of the Czech champion Jan Zelezny and attempted to copy his style.

Chopra was also assigned his first dedicated javelin coach, 2010 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Kashinath Naik, but found Naik's training regimen too difficult and resumed training on his own after a month and a half.

While initially at Tau Devi, Chopra typically achieved throws of around 55 metres, but soon increased his range, and in the National Junior Athletics Championships in Lucknow on 27 October 2012, won gold with a new national record throw of 68.40 metres.

In 2013, Neeraj Chopra entered his first international competition, the World Youth Championships in Ukraine.

He won his first international medal in 2014, a silver at the Youth Olympics Qualification in Bangkok.

He achieved his first throw of over 70 metres at the 2014 senior nationals.

In 2015, Chopra broke the previous world record in the junior category, throwing 81.04 metres in the 2015 All India Inter-University Athletics meet; this was his first throw of over 80 metres.

Chopra finished fifth at the 2015 National Games in Kerala, and received a callback for the national-level training camp as a result, leaving Panchkula in 2016 to train at Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports, Patiala.

According to Chopra, his inclusion in the national camp marked a turning point in his career, as he received better facilities, a better quality diet and an improved standard of training from that available at Panchkula.

According to him, training with national level javelin throwers boosted his morale.

He is also the first track and field athlete from India to win at the World Under-20 Championships, where in 2016 he achieved a world U20 record throw of 86.48 m, becoming the first Indian athlete to set a world record.

At the 2016 South Asian Games, Chopra achieved a new personal best during the athletics finals in Guwahati on 9 February, winning gold with a throw of 82.23 meters, though falling short of the 83-meter Olympic qualifying mark.

He also began training under Australian coach Gary Calvert that month.

Chopra won a gold medal in the 2016 IAAF World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland and set a world junior record of 86.48 m, becoming the first Indian athlete to achieve a world record, at the same time setting a new national record.

Although his U20 record surpassed that of defending Olympic champion Keshorn Walcott, Chopra failed to qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics as the cut-off date had been 11 July, the week before the U20 championships.

His preparations for Rio had also been hampered by a back injury sustained in April 2016 during the Federation Cup in New Delhi, which had noticeably affected his performance in competition.

In September 2016, he left the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports to train at the Sports Authority of India centre in Bangalore.

Chopra participated in the 2018 Commonwealth Games and the 2018 Asian Games, serving as the flag-bearer in the latter and winning gold medals in both.

, he is one of only two Indians to have won an individual Olympic gold medal (the other being Abhinav Bindra), the youngest-ever Indian Olympic gold medalist in an individual event and the only individual to have won gold on his Olympic debut.

His silver medal at the 2022 World Championships made him the second Indian to win a medal at a World Athletics Championships.

He subsequently won the first gold for India at the 2023 World Athletics Championships and second gold at 2022 Asian Games.

Chopra is the Indian record holder for the javelin throw.

Chopra was born in a Haryanvi Ror family in Khandra, Panipat, Haryana.

He has two sisters and his family is largely involved in agriculture.

He did his schooling from BVN Public School.

He graduated from Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College in Chandigarh, and, was pursuing a Bachelor of Arts from Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar, Punjab.

Impressed with Chopra's performance at the South Asian Games and his future potential, the Indian Army offered him a direct appointment as a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) in the Rajputana Rifles with the rank of Naib Subedar.

He accepted the offer and joined the army under sports quota.

After local children teased him about his childhood obesity, Chopra's father enrolled him in a gymnasium at Madlauda; he was later enrolled in a gym in Panipat.

While playing at Shivaji stadium in Panipat, he saw some javelin throwers and began participating himself.