With CWG and Asian Games in sight, Neeraj returns to Doha throwing his own style
The first thing Neeraj Chopra wants people to know, before the regrets and the rebuilding and the new faces in his corner, is that he
The first thing Neeraj Chopra wants people to know, before the regrets and the rebuilding and the new faces in his corner, is that he feels fit. It is the answer Indian sport has been waiting nine months for, and he gives it without ceremony. He had spent the build-up to this Doha return at Magglingen, the Swiss Olympic training base perched above Biel, working in conditions about as far removed from the roar of a championship arena as javelin throwing allows. It was at the same venue, the Suhaim bin Hamad Stadium, that he crossed the 90-metre mark for the first time in his career last year, with a throw of 90.23m. Read Full Story "It's amazing to be back in the competition season, especially in Doha," he said, before admitting, almost as an aside, that the occasion still carries nerves. "I am a little bit nervous speaking in front of so many people after a long time." He liked Magglingen precisely for what it withheld. "It's in the mountains, it's very quiet, and you can focus on your training and your technique," he said. There is something telling in an athlete of his stature seeking out quiet rather than noise, and it sets up the contrast at the heart of his return: a year ago, the noise around him, the pressure of a season that had to end somewhere, pushed him onto a Tokyo runway he should not have walked. That admission, when it comes, is direct rather than defensive. "I had some injury issues last year before the Tokyo World Championships. I don't think competing there was a good decision because I already knew I had some problems.
But because that was the last competition of the year, I wanted to compete there." The back injury had struck 12 days before Tokyo, by his own coach's account at the time, and Chopra finished eighth with a season-worst 84.03m, ending a run of 26 consecutive events in the top two. The body, once compromised, did not simply heal. "As athletes, when we try to manage one injury, we end up getting another one," he said. "After the back injury during the World Championships, I had another one in my ankle and then in my shoulder." What followed was not a quick fix but a recalibration: a sit-down with his team and his physiotherapist, a decision to stop chasing fitness and start rebuilding it, and a first throwing session only a month and a half before this week's press conference. He told the Doha organisers he could only confirm a week out. "Then I said yes. It's my favourite place to open my season." GOING BACK TO HIS TECHNIQUE The most significant shift, though, sits in his corner rather than on the runway. After Tokyo, Chopra parted ways with Jan Zelezny, the Czech great under whom he had broken the 90m barrier, in a split both men have described as amicable and mutual. Chopra does not relitigate it. "Working with Jan opened my eyes to so many new ideas," he had said of that stint. But the World Championships left him wanting something else. "After the World Championships, I thought I needed to work more with my own ideas." That search has led him back to where he started, training now under Jaiveer Singh Chaudhary, known to him simply as Jai, the man who first put a javelin in his hand at Panipat.
The BriefWire