Neeraj Chopra clinches gold medal at the Doha Diamond League with a throw of 88.67m

Neeraj Chopra has made a terrific start to the season with a throw of 88.67m to clinch the gold medal at the Doha Diamond League.

Star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra couldn’t have asked for a better start to the season. The reigning Olympic champion clinched another gold medal at the Doha Diamond League with a terrific throw of 88.67m.

Although he failed to hit the 90m mark that he has been eyeing for a while, Chopra will take plenty of confidence from this victory given that the field consisted the who’s who in the world of javelin throwing. Stars such as world champion Anderson Peters and Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Jakub Vadlejch of Czech Republic also competed here but ended up falling short to the Indian athlete.

Chopra opened his account with the 88.67m throw and had backed himself to get 90m with at least one of his attempts. Chopra came after Peters began the contest with a throw of 85.88m and it immediately put the field under pressure.

However, he failed to top his first throw and recorded 88.67m, 86.04m, 85.47, foul, 84.37m, and 86.52m in successive attempts. Valdejch, who has the season's leading throw before Chopra, kept everyone on their toes with throws of 88.63m and 88.47m and finished second. Peters came third with a best throw of 85.88m.

Given that he has begun the season by clinching the gold medal in Doha, Chopra will feel particulary happy about his chances for the remainder of the season where several big events including the World Championships in August and the Asian Games in September lie in store for him.

Heading into Doha, Chopra had been increasingly stressing on his desire to breach the 90m mark sooner rather than later. He had recorded 89m in three competitions last year but failed to cross the elusive milestone. When he got his personal best of 89.94m in Stockholm, it looked like a matter of time before he hit the mark.

However, although he has not been able to achieve that objective, Chopra’s incredible consistency truly makes him stand apart from the rest of the field. He went past 88m regularly in five of the six competitions. At the world championships in Eugene he won silver with a similar big throw of 88.13m and he won the Diamond League title for the first time with 88.14m throw. He has opened the season in a similar vein.

Although Chopra does want to push himself to the limit in order to cross the 90m mark, he is also careful about not risking injury. He learnt his lesson at the World Championships where he continued to push himself and ended up straining his groin which ruled him out of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last year.

“After that fourth throw at the world championships, I felt a lot of pain, but I couldn't stop myself. Maybe I should've stopped there," he had said. "This year we have a really long season. The focus is to be injury-free and have a healthy season. Bas, injury na aaye,” he added.