India’s Neeraj Chopra won the gold medal for Javelin Throw at the Tokyo Olympics on August 7th, becoming the first-ever track-and-field athlete from the country to have accomplished the feat.
He is also only the second Indian to have won the Gold Medal at the Olympics across any sport, the last being Abhinav Bindra’s Gold in Shooting at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Neeraj Chopra, who topped the qualifying round ahead of everyone else, repeated the same stunt at the final. Only this time, he threw the Javelin a bit longer, across 87.58 meters.
Czech Athlete Jakub Vadlejch threw 86.67 meters for Silver, while his fellow countryman Czech Vesely Vitezslav threw 85.44 meters for Bronze.
Germany’s Johannes Vetter, who threw up to 97.76 meters in Poland last September and came in as a favorite, could not clear his way to the second round.
Celebrations broke out in Neeraj Chopra’s village Khandra in Haryana; while the congratulatory messages came in from the Indian President on Twitter, Prime Minister Modi spoke to Neeraj on the phone.
This is India’s 7th medal at the Olympics overall and its best performance so far in any Olympics.
Bajrang Punia to bring home the Bronze
Earlier, Bajrang Punia won the Bronze medal against Kazakhstan’s Daulet Niyazbekov in Freestyle wrestling 65 kg, to give India its sixth overall medal. The wrestler was inundated with congratulations, from the President and the Prime Minister to celebrities across professions and from the Indian Netizens.
Going up against Daulet, who defeated him in the 2019 world championships, did not seem to pressurize the Indian as he attempted his moves, only to be avoided by his opponent. This fetched India’s first point for the opponent’s passivity.
Pushing his opponent out of bounds, Bajrang doubled his lead to 2-0.
The second period saw Bajrang Punia managing a takedown of the Kazakh wrestler, winning two points to double his lead yet again.
Score now at 4-0, the Indian wrestler, more confident and agile, accomplished two more moves to fetch 2 points per move, increasing the lead to 8-0.