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Neeraj Chopra resumes season with a shot at Diamond League podium
A good show in Lausanne will ease Neeraj's passage to next month's Diamond League Finals in Zurich, an event where only the top six will be in action.
Almost a month to the day, Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra tweeted about his inability to participate in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, owing to a "minor groin strain" sustained during his silver-winning effort at the World Championships in Eugene. Four weeks of rehabilitation later, the 24-year-old will return to action at the Diamond League meet in Lausanne on Friday.
While breaching the elusive 90m mark will certainly be an objective, Chopra, who finished second at the Stockholm Diamond League in June with a personal best throw of 89.94m, will also gun for his second consecutive top-three finish at the elite competition. A good show in Switzerland will ease his passage to next month's Diamond League Finals in Zurich, an event where only the top six will be in action.
Chopra will be challenged by a fairly depleted field, with world champion Anderson Peters — recently assaulted aboard a boat in Grenada — and Germany's Julian Weber, who finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics, giving the event a miss. The two also occupy second and third places in the Diamond League standings, and their absence gives Chopra a major fillip on his comeback. The Indian is currently placed fourth with seven points.
Pakistan's Arshad Nadeem, who battled an elbow injury to win a surprise gold in Birmingham (90.18m), will also skip the meet. Nadeem, the only South Asian to breach the 90m mark, extended his golden run to Islamic Solidarity Games, where he threw an impressive 88.55m.
The event will still have sufficient stardust though, with Czech Republic's Tokyo silver medallist Jakub Vadlejch, who also leads the Diamond League standings, and 2012 Olympics champion Keshorn Walcott being Chopra's primary challengers.
With a season's best of 90.88m, Vadlejch remains the only thrower in the field to have cleared 90m this year. Walcott, in the midst of an indifferent season where he is yet to finish on the podium, still has a personal best of 89.07m. Alongside Vadlejch, he remains the only thrower in the fray to have ever gone over 90m.
Chopra himself is coming off a good run. After six months of training and conditioning that saw him lose close to 10 kgs and return to perfect shape, his season began in June with the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku where he finished second with an effort of 89.30m, breaking his own national record in the process.
Four days later, he turned up at Kuortane Games and took the top spot (86.69m) before finishing second at the Stockholm Diamond League. After a brief stutter in his early throws at the World Championships, Chopra hurled the spear 88.13m to secure a historic silver.
He returns to the competition fresh and hungry and will be, without doubt, aided by the conditions in Switzerland. Lausanne's elevation — it is 526m above sea level — and benign temperatures that hover around mid-20s, are conducive for long throws, provided the body is sufficiently warmed up for the evening start. Chopra is no stranger to successful comebacks, and if he hits his straps early, another special performance cannot be ruled out.
