How a farmer’s son brought laurels to India, won gold in javelin

A boy from a simple family on Saturday succeeded in bringing a smile on the faces of 135 crore Indians as he became the first ever Indian to win a gold medal at javelin throw event in the Tokyo Olympics. It is pertinent to mention that Chopra belongs to a farmers’ family. Neeraj’s father Satish Kumar hails from a small village of Khandra of district Panipat . Neeral developed an interest in Javelin at a tender age of about 10 and used to practice at the Panipat stadium which paved the path for his success later.  It is worth mentioning that in the earlier part of his career, he did not have the privilege of training under a coach.  Presently, he is posted as a subedar in Indian Army and graduated from Kurukshetra University.

Satish Kumar, father of Neeraj, on the success of his son said that he is proud of his son and was always confident about Neeraj’s win. In continuation to this, his dreams came true.

Over his success, Manohar Lal, the Chief Minister of Haryana congratulated him saying that an athletic centre will be set up in the Panchkula where Chopra used to practice for the Olympic. Besides, Chopra has been offered to head the chair of this upcoming institute.

It’s not the very first time that he won the gold medal. Prior to this, he was continuously soldering medal hopes at a young age as he had won gold in Junior world championship, Asian Championship and Commonwealth Games held in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively. Neeraj’s gold is India’s first gold in athletics since the Olympic games came into existence. He created history in 2016 by becoming the world champion at the under-20 world championship tournament held in Poland.

 Neeraj wasn’t born with a silver spoon and achieving such a milestone was not less than a tough task. Neeraj, a boy who was brought up in a joint family and still belongs to the same family, was overweight in his early age as compared to other boys of the family. In view of favourable passion towards sports, his family started sending him to the gym. Amid this, an incident attracted his attention towards the Javelin throw. In wake of this, he started playing and in continuation to this, one day one of his throws had attracted the attention of the coach which made him convince his parents for the game. 

But what emerged here as an obstacle was the management of the funding as his family was not a prosperous one and going through economical crisis. Somehow, the family members managed 7 thousand to get him the Javelin and rest is the history.