Time to focus on Mission Tokyo for world champion Neeraj Chopra

The only athlete to have won back-to-back javelin golds in World Athletics has been, no prizes for guessing, the Czech great Jan Železný in 1993 and 1995. It will be interesting to find out if Neeraj Chopra — one of Železný's current protégés and the great Indian hope — can emulate him in Tokyo at the World Athletics Championships from 13-21 September.

Two years have flown by since Neeraj’s golden effort of 88.17 m in Budapest, propelling him to join the elite club of global track and field athletes who have held the Olympics and world champions’ crowns together. The journey thereafter has been a mixed bag, but it's to the javelin ace’s credit that he has continued to try and evolve his craft, taking a tough call to train under all-time great Železný this season, and finally keeping his date with the 90 m-mark in the Doha Golden League earlier this year.

A more mature athlete now — though no longer one of the most eligible bachelors in the country — Chopra has mastered the art of drawing on that last bit of reserve to manage a podium finish even on ‘hard days.’ His effort of 85.01 m in the last competitive event before the Worlds in the Zurich Golden League final on Thursday evening was a reflection of that, much like the way Neeraj overcame a horrible evening at the Paris Olympics last year to ensure a silver with 89.45 m in his only legitimate throw in six attempts.

‘’There are some hard days in sports, so today was probably very hard for me,’’ Neeraj said during his media interaction in Zurich. It would have been a huge delight for the Indian diaspora if he could better Julian Weber, his in-form German rival who won gold with a monstrous 91.51 m, but only Neeraj and his team will know best as to when to push for that extra mile.

Applauding Weber’s effort, the greatest ever Indian track and field star said: ‘’Now we have time for the World Championship [in Tokyo]. That is my biggest goal for this year. So, now there is a need to understand what is wrong and that has to be corrected for the World Championship.’’

The competition for the big prize has only got tougher in these two years ù while there will be a lot of media hype in the coming days to bill the javelin event as a face-off between Neeraj and Arshad Nadeem, the powerfully built Olympic champion from Pakistan.

Earlier this week, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) named an 18-member contingent to have qualified for Tokyo. Neeraj will have company in the trio of Sachin Yadav, Yashvir Singh and Rohit Yadav making the cut — the last named making it through the ranking quota following his gold medal at the Inter State Championships in Chennai.

Budapest saw all three of them, including eventual champion Neeraj, finishing in the top six, but the fact remains that he ploughs a lonely furrow when it comes to medal hopes at this level.

The weight of expectations on his broad shoulders is indeed scary, but Neeraj seems to now enjoy it over a period of five years. If someone had predicted a decade back that India would one day have an Olympic and world champion in javelin, it would have been brushed off as a pipe dream. After back-to-back Olympic medals, a world champion’s tag, Asian Games gold and surviving in the cauldron of top-flight athletics day in and out, he is nothing short of a true global icon, though he wears the mantle rather lightly.

Replying to a query on his expectations from fellow javelin throwers, Neeraj said: ‘’Last time, we had three athletes in the top six. This time we will try so that we all go to the finals again and finish at least in the top eight. It will be a very big thing for our country. I am very happy that our javelin is reaching such heights and we will try to take it even higher.’’

Finally, as the undisputed leader of the contingent, what would be his one advice for the likes of Avinash Kujur or Parul Chaudhury? ‘’I would like to tell everyone that we should try to at least achieve our personal best. The best athletes of the world come there and if we can perform consistently and try to do our personal best, that will also be very good. So that is my only advice: that everyone should prepare for their personal best,’’ he added.

 Over then, to Tokyo…