87.58 m: GOLD
Tokyo/New Delhi: It was a Super Saturday for the whole of India. Twenty-three-year-old Neeraj Chopra scripted history by winning the men's javelin with a best throw of 87.58 metres to claim a historic first Olympic athletics gold medal for India.
The Czech Republic's Jakub Vadlejch won silver with 86.67 metres and Vitezslav Vesely claimed the bronze with 85.44.
In golf, Aditi Ashok, who was in medal contention, finished an agonising fourth and missed the medal by a whisker.
With the addition of Chopra's gold on the last day of their competitive schedule, India signed off with seven medals in all, including two silver and four bronze, the last of which was delivered by superstar wrestler Bajrang Punia on the day.
In shoring up India's performance, Chopra achieved several firsts.
He became the youngest Indian to win an Olympic gold, the first in track-and-field to do so and the only one to do it in his debut Games.
At 23, he joined Abhinav Bindra in the select gold club but beat him on age as the latter was 25 when he claimed the top prize in the 2008 Beijing Games.
With this, the country surpassed the previous best haul of six medals achieved in the 2012 London Games where there was no gold.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Chopra after his momentous achievement, applauding him for not letting injuries and break in momentum come in the way of his performance.
"Many many congratulations to you, you have brought joy to the country on the last day of competitions for us," Modi said in a telephonic conversation with the youngster.
An excited Chopra responded by saying: "I wanted to do well, gold jeetna bohot badi baat hai (it's a huge thing to win gold). I got support and good wishes from a lot of people."
It was also the first time that India picked up medals across so many varied disciplines. There were weightlifting and wrestling silver medals through Mirabai Chanu and Ravi Dahiya respectively.
And the four bronze medals came from badminton star P V Sindhu, boxer Lovlina Borgohain, Punia and the men's hockey team, which finished on the podium for the first time in 41 years.
Chopra saved the best moment for the last.
The 23-year-old son of a farmer from Khandra village near Panipat in Haryana produced a second-round throw of 87.58m in the finals, which nobody in a field of 12 could come anywhere close to.
Brimming with confidence with hardly any nerves on display and just the way he did it in the qualification round three days back, Chopra began with a bang by sending the spear to a distance of 87.03m and then improved it to 87.58m, his best of the day.
"It feels unbelievable. It is the first time India has won a gold in athletics, so I feel very good. We have just one gold here in other sports," he said after the triumph that would immortalise him as a great.
"This is our first Olympic medal for a very long time, and in athletics, it is the first time we have gold, so it's a proud moment for me and my country.
"Milkha Singh wanted to hear the national anthem in a stadium. He is no longer with us but his dream has been fulfilled," the Haryana athlete, who is a Subedar with 4 Rajputana Rifles in the Indian Army, said dedicating the achievement to the iconic sprinter, who had finished fourth in the 1960 Rome Olympics. Haryana Chief Minister M L Khattar announced Rs 6 crore for the athlete while his Punjab counterpart Amarinder Singh declared a special cash reward of Rs 2 crore. Cash rewards have also been announced for the other medal winners and Olympians by various states.
The cash-rich BCCI announced Rs one crore for Chopra and also monetary rewards for India's other medal winners at the Tokyo Olympics.
Khattar said that Chopra will be made head of the upcoming Centre for Excellence in Athletics in Panchkula.
For his bronze medal-winning effort, as per the state's sports policy, Punia will get a cash reward of Rs 2.5 crore, a plot at concessional rates and a state government job. Ravi Dahiya, who became the second Indian wrestler to win a silver medal at the Olympics, will get Rs 4 crore award money.
The Haryana government will also honour the nine women's hockey players of the state with a cash reward of Rs 50 lakh each while an equal amount would be given to each sportsperson of the state who stood at the fourth position in any event in the Olympics.
In a tweet, BCCI secretary Jay Shah also announced that Rs 50 lakh each will be given to silver medallists — Mirabai Chanu and Ravi Dahiya.
Chanu won India's first weightlifting medal at the Games and Ravi Dahiya became only the second wrestler from the country to win a silver medal after Sushil Kumar (2012).
The bronze medallists — wrestler Bajrang Punia, boxer Lovlina Borgohain and shuttler P V Sindhu — will get Rs 25 lakh each. The men's hockey team which won its first Olympic medal in 41 years will get Rs 1.25 crore. Several private enterprises too announced cash rewards and other incentives for the players.
From the time Neeraj arrived as a junior champion four years ago, he has been unstoppable. The Commonwealth Games gold medal in Gold Coast in 2018 was proof of his prowess. He followed it up with a gold at the Asian Games in Jakarta the same year. Then came an injury, which left him in trouble.
To call the Olympics postponement by a year as luck would be wrong, though, for Neeraj, it was very good. For those well versed with the javelin throw, at 5 feet and 11 inches, Neeraj is not tall.
What separated him from the rest of the field was his acceleration on the runway like a fast bowler in cricket and releasing the 800 gm javelin with precision. It soared under the arc lights and landed thud on the grass at 87.58 metres, his second attempt.
Each thrower gets six attempts but Neeraj was too good early on. The gold chain around his neck glimmered, his eyes shone as if searching for something special in Tokyo. When Neeraj was touted as a medal prospect two months ago by the athletics magazines in Europe, there were several cynics at home who doubted his potential.
From the time he qualified for the finals, four days ago, he has been in meditation mode. With his cell phone switched off, he had curtailed his interaction with others to minimum inside the Games Village. The entire focus was on staying fit as the pandemic has been a cause of concern for athletes despite extreme precautions being exercised.
With inputs from agencies
