Indian javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra has won a gold medal on Saturday at Tokyo Olympics 2020, bringing a medal for his country in athletics after a wait of 100 years. The 23-year-old from Haryana finished with a stunning throw of 87.4 m. Though, the throw was slightly less than what Chopra was aiming at, 90 metres.

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At 5.39 pm on August 7, Chopra broke the spell of 100 years and brought home the much-awaited yellow metal. It was in 1920 that three track and field athletes were part of the five-member Indian team at the Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium — the other two being wrestlers. Since then, no Indian had won a medal in athletics, until today.

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The International Olympic Committee still credits Norman Pritchard’s 200m and 200m hurdles silver medals in the 1900 Paris Olympics to India though various research, including the records of then IAAF (now World Athletics), showed that he had competed for Great Britain.

Chopra, son of a farmer from Khandra village near Panipat, about 88 km from the Indian capital Delhi, entered athletics to lose weight and since then he never looked back.

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Neeraj Chopra has scripted history by winning the elusive medal, which the likes of late Milkha Singh and PT Usha, though very close, couldn’t get in 1964 and 1984 editions.

“I am at my first Olympic Games, and I feel very good. In warm-up my performance wasn’t so good, but then (in the qualifying round) my first throw had a good angle, and was a perfect throw,” Chopra had said after the qualifying round on Wednesday, adding that he “will try to repeat this (performance) with a higher score.” The 23-year-old had entered the Olympics with the fourth best throw (88.07m) this year.

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From the first throw itself, Neeraj Chopra’s performance was one of the best as he finished ahead of 2017 world champion Johannes Vetter of Germany.

The 28-year-old German, who had earlier said that Chopra will find it tough to beat him in the finals, struggled in his first two throws before crossing the automatic qualification mark with an 85.64m final throw. He, however, had entered the Olympics after having seven monster throws of over 90m between April and June.

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Born on December 24, 1997, Neeraj Chopra completed his studies from Chandigarh. He won a gold medal at the IAAF World U-20 championship held in Poland. Soon after he was commissioned a junior officer in the Indian Army.