New Delhi: India’s two-time Olympic medallist and reigning world champion Neeraj Chopra will be the star attraction in a marquee international javelin tournament at home later this year, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) said on Tuesday.
Chopra has emerged as a global track and field star on the back of his stupendous international success that includes back-to-back medals at the Olympics and World Championships.
After his historic gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Chopra won a silver (2022, Eugene) and a gold (2023, Budapest) at the World Championships before pocketing an Olympic silver in Paris last year. Besides, he has had a dominating run in Diamond League with successive podium finishes in the last three years. He won the title in Zurich in 2022 and returned with silver in 2023 Eugene and 2024 Brussels.
However, Chopra has competed only once at home in the intervening period. In May last year, he appeared in Federation Cup in Bhubaneswar which he won with a throw of 82.27m. Since the Tokyo high, Chopra has been training overseas and competing in international events. The AFI is therefore planning an international event at home to cash in on his global popularity to give the sport a push in India.
“We are looking to hold a top javelin competition in India in which the top-10 javelin throwers in the world will compete. This will be an invitation tournament to be held later this year,” outgoing AFI president Adille Sumariwalla said in Chandigarh.
“Neeraj Chopra will be there. He is part of the team that is organising the event, along with JSW, a foreign firm, and the AFI are coming together to create this competition. This is being done as there is so much interest in javelin with August 7 — the day Neeraj won gold in Tokyo — being observed as National Javelin Day,” Sumariwalla added.
AFI is looking to organise the event after the World Championships in Tokyo which is scheduled from September 13-21.
It is understood that Chopra himself will be canvassing for the home event and will personally extend an invitation to top throwers. As is the norm in international track and field events, global stars drum up support for their home events that helps the organisers draw top athletes.
Chopra is hugely popular on the circuit and shares great camaraderie with the bunch of top javelin throwers. Last year, he withdrew from the Golden Spike meet in Czech Republic due to a niggle but kept his word to javelin thrower and Olympic medallist Jakub Vadlejch and showed up at his home event as a guest which was appreciated by the organisers.
With Chopra, long jumper Murali Sreeshankar, steeplechaser Avinash Sable helping Indian athletics take impressive strides in the world, AFI is looking to bring home international events. Sumariwalla said India has expressed interest to host the 2029 World Championships and 2027 World Relays.
The AFI has already pitched for a bronze level Continental Tour event in Bhubaneswar this year besides submitting a bid application for hosting the 2028 World Junior (U-20) Championships. This was announced last month when World Athletics president Sebastian Coe visited India last month.
“I’ve been to the city (Bhubaneshwar) during the Asian Championships (in 2017), and it’s a good sporting city. I’ve also received a letter of intent to stage the U-20 World Championships from AFI. That now sits with our bidding team alongside other bids,” Coe had said, while confirming the continental tour meet in Bhubaneswar.
“They (AFI) are sharing an ambition to stage more of our events. But that’s over to our evaluation panel and bidding teams to go through the checks, and make sure that all the right assets are in place in order to do that,” Coe said.
