Neeraj Chopra’s javelin gold medal seals India’s greatest ever Olympics

[raajveer]

Army officer wins nation’s first athletics gold to spark celebrations and a resurgence of pride amid the ravages of Covid

By Amrit Dhillon and Martin Farrer

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-ever-olympics

India has been swept up in a wave of euphoria after Neeraj Chopra won the country’s first ever Olympic athletics gold medal with victory in the men’s javelin in Tokyo.

Chopra’s historic triumph on Saturday night means India has racked up its best-ever Olympic medal haul of seven and caps a resurgence of national pride amid the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 427,000 Indians.

India was already riding high on a strong performance by the men’s and women’s hockey teams after decades in the doldrums.



But Chopra’s victory in the javelin with a throw of 87.58m was something that none of his 1.38 billion compatriots have ever seen before.

“It feels unbelievable,” he said. “This is our first Olympic medal for a very long time, and in athletics it is the first time we have gold, so it’s a proud moment for me and my country.”

For a long time to come, millions of Indians will remember where they were the day Chopra won. There was hardly a household where families were not clustered to watch the moment when a nation obsessed with gold in every form – jewellery, bars, coins - could finally exult at winning a medal of gold.

“I went out for dinner later and the restaurant owner gave everyone free drinks to celebrate the win. He said he had given up ever hoping to hear the Indian national anthem played at the games,” said shop keeper Neeraj Tiwari.

The excited congratulatory tweet from prime minister Narendra Modi set the tone. After speaking to the new golden boy of Indian sport, Modi tweeted that Chopra “personifies the best of sporting talent and sportsman spirit”.


At the army officer’s home village of Khandra in Haryana, ecstatic scenes broke out. The obligatory crackers were burst and farmers and their sons danced in the streets to loud drumming after watching the man who had been so badly bullied as a teenager for his obesity (at 13, he weighed 80kg) that he had to take to the gym, doing the country proud.

‘I kept chanting a prayer constantly. It was the only way I could calm myself,” his mother, Saroj, told reporters after the media invaded the village. His father Satish, a farmer who looked overwhelmed and unable to handle all the constantly ringing phones in the house, said simply: “I am not getting the words to explain this happiness.”

‘Athletics, gold, India. Those three words have never been used together,” said one newspaper. Other writers waxed poetical, talking of how Chopra’s javelin “soared, picked out by the blaze of lights at the Olympic stadium, through the warm and humid night, and plunged itself straight into the pages of history”.

‘We are so used to getting ‘close’, to ‘just missing it’ or ‘missing it by a whisker’ that I thought it wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime. Chopra has redeemed all our earlier misses,” a young man in Khandra told reporters.

India’s only previous athletics medals came in 1900 – two silvers won by Norman Pritchard, son of a British colonial family, in the 200m and the 200m hurdles. And despite a record number of hockey team golds, the nation’s only previous individual gold was won by shooter Abhinav Bindra in 2012.

Cricket is the all-consuming sport in India, and all of its powerbrokers were watching Chopra’s triumph. The Board of Control for Cricket in India announced a cash reward for the Olympic medal winners. Military leaders chimed in, too.

Chopra, a junior officer in the Indian army with the Rajputana Rifles, made his first mark on international athletics with a world junior title in 2016. Two years later, he became the first Indian athlete to win the javelin at the Asian Games and at the Commonwealth Games.

Preparations were under way on Sunday to welcome Chopra when he comes home. The road into the village will likely have to be widened to take all the media vehicles and VIPs who will descend.

There were also congratulations for wrestler Bajrang Punia, who won a bronze medal in the men’s freestyle wrestling 65kg final on Saturday.

[Neha.Kulkarni]

They can't even praise or talk about Neeraj, without talking about COVID deaths in India

What a trashy article LoL