The Olympic champion leads the race for the grand finale of the marquee Diamond League, which he had won last year, becoming the first Indian athlete to do so
India's Neeraj Chopra in action during the Lausanne Diamond League. Chopra won the tournament after returning from a month-long injury layoff
Image: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
If an idiom could define Neeraj Chopra, it would surely be ‘hit the ground running’.
After a month-long injury break that saw the Olympic champion missing three events, Chopra returned to the Lausanne leg of the Diamond League to finish at the top. This is Chopra’s second Diamond League victory this year, having won the Doha event in May. The 25-year-old now leads the qualifications for the final to be held in Eugene, US, in September. [The Diamond League is a series of track and field events culminating in a grand finale for which the top eight athletes qualify.]
Chopra was the first Indian to win the coveted Diamond League title in 2022, a year in which he also won a silver at the World Championships. His list of achievements, which include an Olympic gold in 2021, is nothing short of a fairy-tale considering that he took to athletics at 12, at the prodding of his uncle who wanted him to shed some weight.
What makes Chopra ready all the time, and enables him to pull out a first-place finish even after an injury layoff? “Neeraj is always prepared. He’s always confident. He knows he’s done the hard work,” says Rushdee Warley, CEO of Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS), the high-performance centre set up by the JSW Group in Karnataka.
Chopra, who has been supported by JSW Sports, the sports vertical of the steel conglomerate, since 2015, has spent a considerable amount of time at the IIS over various phases of his career, training and recovering from injuries. “He’s consistent in no matter what he does,” adds Warley. “You’ll see the same kind of application and effort from him on Day 1 of the week as you’ll see on the last day, during the last session of training.”