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High hopes from Paris, I’ve done it once: Neeraj
Neeraj Chopra, India's Olympic gold medallist in track and field, is preparing for the 2024 Paris Olympics and aims to defend his title despite the tough competition. He believes in keeping things simple and focusing on his goal of throwing the javelin as far as possible. He doesn't feel the need to follow every new trend or copy other athletes' methods.
The 2023 athletics season has just come to an end. But Neeraj Chopra, India’s only Olympic gold medallist in track and field, has had no time to rest. The reason for that is simple: the Paris Olympics come calling in 2024 and the 25-year-old wants to leave no stone unturned in his quest to become a repeat champion.
Defending a crown is never easy. Chopra did that at the Asian Games recently but the level of the javelin event there was way lower than what it will be at the Paris Olympics where the European athletes will be in attendance. Chopra knows that but he isn’t going to let that weigh him down.
Speaking at a virtual session of the 21st edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Friday, Chopra spoke about his process and what the challenge of the Olympics means to him.
“When I think about Paris, only one thing comes to mind: whatever hard work I have put in up to this point, whatever I have learnt, I want to put that to best use there. Defending a title is never easy at the Olympics level. I feel I am in the best space right now; at the best age. So I want to try and avoid injuries. I know it will be tough, but this is the joy. It is a challenge and one that I accept,” Chopra said in a conversation with HT’s national sports editor Ashish Magotra.
“I think I won’t need to change too much. When I went to Tokyo, everyone expected a medal. The colour of the medal is decided on the day, but this won’t be the first time. The expectations people have from me, or I have from myself — I have managed to fulfil them. So I have done it before. They expected, I expect and I won. Now, it is important to live in the moment. I won’t do anything different — train well and then when I will be in the stadium in Paris, it will only be time to go out there and show what I am all about.”
Sometimes, the pressure to push the envelope also see athletes try a bit too hard, which can prove to be counter-intuitive. But Chopra tries his hardest to keep things as simple as possible.
“Sport, essentially, is simple,” said Chopra. “My goal is to throw the javelin as far as possible. It is a simple enough goal but to achieve that, a lot of other things need to align. But no matter what you do — no matter how much talk there is about pressure and expectations and training — at the end of the day, you have to get the distance. The main job is to throw that javelin as far as possible. For that how can I better myself, how can I improve is important.”
He said there were a lot of “new and complicated things” in sport — from diet to training — and it’s easy to get lost in some of them. “But if we talk about athletes earlier, like Jan Zelezny who holds the javelin world record with a 98m throw, they had simple fundas, simple training, and it worked. So the things we have these days, if we use them well, it will be a good thing but if we overuse or try and use all of that, it can make things very complicated. So I try to not over-complicate things — I try to focus on the simple things,” he said.
“I don’t feel the need to run after every new innovation or something that other athletes are trying because I feel everyone has their own method, their own way of doing things. We don’t need to copy them to improve ourselves.”
