Most of Neeraj Chopra's Instagram feed consists of posts that are specific to high-profile athletes. There are photos and videos of him training, traveling abroad for tournaments, throwing big, winning. And in the weeks before the Olympics, there are marketing campaigns too – for consumer goods, nutritional supplements, engine oil and shaving products. It makes perfect sense - Neeraj (22) is an advertiser's dream: tall, powerfully built, blessed with a movie star's good looks.
There is one post, however, which shows why he is rare even in Indian sport - a world-class competitor in athletics. Titled "Medicine Ball Throw", the post features Chopra standing tall with his arms above his head, holding a ball that weighs around 4kg. Then, with the ball still in his hands, he starts coming back until it is almost in an inverted U shape. When the ball is a few inches off the ground, when he thinks it might break in two - "You're going to fracture your L4 L5", as one comment said - he explodes explosively. Takes the ball out from the angle of the camera. In a comment, Chopra says that his record for that throw is 30 metres. (More on that throw later.)
When he takes the field for the qualifying round in javelin throw at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo on August 4, Chopra will know he has a chance to become the first Indian to win a medal in the track and field event at the Olympics. Only three athletes have thrown bigger than that this year, and only one of them - gold medal favorite Johannes Vetter - has thrown more than 85 meters than the Indian.
Chopra is already the best Indian athlete of this generation - with gold medals in Asian and Commonwealth Games. He's good, really good. And in a couple of weeks time he could very well be.
Chopra grew up in a farming family in Khandara village of Haryana's Panipat district, which had neither a playground nor a spear. He played cricket like everyone else, however, which was a sign of things to come, Chopra was often teased as he could never move his hand and could only throw Bhatt (Chuck).
Indeed, for someone who is now called natural, Chopra's sudden entry into the game. In 2011, he was taken to the Sports Authority of India's Panipat center 16 km away by his uncle, who realized that Chopra - then 13 and 5'4 - weighed 77kg. "You know how it is in India," Neeraj once said. "This is just one chance that I became a javelin thrower. If there were runners in Panipat, I would have become a sprinter."
Instead, Panipat had four javelin throwers, and Chopra learned his basics from them. And within a few months he had improved enough to win a bronze medal in the district championship.
But if he had natural potential, Chopra also backed himself to make the most of it. He convinced his parents to move him to Panipat and then at the age of 14 decided to move to the SAI Sports Hostel at Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula.
While he now has a world-class biomechanical specialist to work with, Chopra was largely self-educated at the time, as there weren't many javelin coaches – a reason for India's lack of traditional success in that field. The result was He used to take suggestions from his superiors but he also used to watch YouTube videos of great people. In fact, Chopra will model much of his technique from world record holder Jan Zelezny, including his trademark post-throw "fall"—while most throwers remain stationary at the end of their throws, Chopra, like Zelezny, is on his feet. blew himself away. The moment of launch, landing on his palms dangerously close to the finish line.
It was Chopra's natural talent that made her progress in her early years almost entirely as self-education - she got her first formal coach in 2015.
In 2016, Australian coach Gerry Calvert, considered one of the officials on the javelin throw, took over from Chopra. He was initially not particularly enthusiastic about serving as the coach of India's then anemic javelin program – at that time the country had qualified only one Olympian in the discipline. However, he changed his mind after watching a video of Chopra competing in the South Asian Games. Chopra, then 19, threw 82.66 meters - not a national record, but enough to indicate to Calvert that he was special - a "once in a generation thrower".
Within a few months, Chopra would win gold at the World Juniors - the first Indian athlete to do so. He often remarked that if he had qualified for the 2016 Olympics and scored a world junior winning throw of 86.48m in Rio, he would have won bronze.
Calvert would know what a 'once in a generation' talent is. In 1997 in Townsville, Calvert coached Australian fast bowler Mitchell Johnson - a 16-year-old schoolboy who wanted to learn to throw the javelin. "He was just exciting to watch. He had this sleekness. He was lean and athletic and had an air of confidence that set him apart. That's what I felt when I met Neeraj," Calvert said in 2016 .
Back to that Instagram post. While it may appear that he has taken Neo from the Matrix a step further that he would be proud, Chopra's current coach, Klaus Bartonitz, says there are real-world applications for the movement. Bartonietz is one of the world's leading biomechanical experts in javelin throw and believes that flexibility, more than sheer strength, plays a major role in the event.
In a documentary on Belgian TV, Bartonitz explains with a simple example. "Take your index finger and shake it as hard as you can. Now instead of using power in that finger, try pulling it back with your other hand. The finger is now accumulating a lot of energy that has to be released too quickly. The javelin thrower must develop tremendous elasticity and strength in the elastic components of the body—muscles, ligaments and fascia. It is the ability to create tension here and then release it that makes the spear fly. Arrows would have to be made with spears," he says.
Some amount of this ability to create tension in your body can be trained. But for someone like Chopra, much of this ability is instinctive.
This is what Calvert believed. He first clarified what Bartoniets would later say is that the best throw is the result of building up the maximum amount of tension as possible. Calvert said, "The javelin throw is all about getting the longest movement of the throwing arm in the shortest amount of time. Neeraj has an innate feel for long movements."
Most throwers, trying to throw the javelin as fast as possible, do not stretch their throwing arm as far as they can. "The longer they wait to release their hand, the more distance they can get," Calvert says. "Hand delay is something you keep trying to drill into athletes' heads. Today, probably only the best five throwers have that quality. Some of them take years to get that quality." Neeraj already has that capability."
When Calvert left in 2017, Chopra showed no decline in performance under new coach Uwe Hohn, winning gold medals at the Commonwealth and Asian Games.
But the enormous pressure he had put on his body was finally revealed. Calvert also warned of this. The fact that Chopra had gone completely into self-education throughout all his years without hurt was a miracle, he said back in 2016. It would be three years later that the string at the bow of Chopra's body – the elbow of Chopra's throwing arm – finally broke, forcing her to undergo surgery.
2019 was a year that stood out for Chopra only because of his lack of achievement. He missed competing at the 2019 World Championships - a tournament won by Anderson Peters, who finished third behind Chopra at the 2016 World Juniors. In fact with the Olympics then just a year away and all her competitors scoring qualifying points, Chopra spent the season in rehab. Throughout it all, he remained patient.
As Calvert put it - Chopra was tensely giving himself as much time as possible, waiting until the very last minute when he could unwind himself. When he got the opportunity, Chopra made it count by qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in his first competition back in January 2020, a few months before the qualification period ended.
Of course all that effort seemed in vain when the Olympics were postponed. But wait seems to have worked for Chopra once again. The extra year gave him even more time to complete his rehabilitation and strengthen his body. He has changed the javelin so that it is more competitive in windy conditions and has also corrected his launch angle so that he does not throw his spear as high and to the left as he once used to.
Chopra still says the injury and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic took away two years of his career, but several athletes who were expected to be major medal contenders - defending champion Thomas Röhler, world silver medalists Magnus Kirt and Andreas Hoffmann - Which was the second best throw of 2020 - picked up injuries and withdrew from games.
While the stress of a delayed Olympics has rattled many of her competitors, Chopra has been drenched in more than five years of stress and tension to get her first shot at the Olympics. He is coiled and ready. On the 4th of August he will finally be able to explode.