Sports
Neeraj Chopra after taking that javelin threw it at a distance of 87.58 metres that won him the gold medal in men's javelin throw final in Olympics.
Updated : Aug 26, 2021, 03:24 PM IST
Neeraj Chopra, India's golden boy has become an apple of everyone's eye after winning the Gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics 2020, becoming only the second Indian to win an individual gold medal in the Olympic Games and the first Indian athlete to win a medal in Track and Field.
Chopra threw the javelin at a distance of 87.58 metres in his second attempt and confirmed a medal just after that. However, none of the other 11 athletes came even close to, leave alone surpassing that mark. No one even came close to Chopra's first attempt of 87.02 metres but his gold medal-winning throw came in his second attempt.
Now recently, Chopra revealed that he had taken the first throw in a hurry saying that his fellow competitor from Pakistan, Arshad Nadeem was carrying his javelin.
“I was searching for my javelin at the start of the final in Olympics. I was not able to find it. Suddenly, I saw Arshad Nadem was moving around with my javelin. Then I told him, ‘Bhai give this javelin to me, it is my javelin! I have to throw with it’. He gave it back to me. That’s why you must have seen I took my first throw hurriedly," Neeraj told The Times of India.
Now, the video of the same incident has surfaced online where Nadeem is seen passing the javelin to Neeraj, after which he took his first throw in a little hurry but still was able to throw it at a distance of 87.02 metres.
This video will go down in history as evidence of Pakistan's Arshad Nadeem stealing the javelin of Neeraj Chopra at #Tokyo2020.
— Soumyadipta (@Soumyadipta) August 25, 2021
Neeraj's first throw could have been better if this shameful incident didn't happen.
Arshad is lucky that @WeAreTeamIndia didn't lodge a complaint. pic.twitter.com/VyQ1ncERyw
Chopra's gold medal win was the icing on the cake as it capped off India's most successful Olympics with a tally of seven medals overtaking their medal tally of London Olympics 2012, where Team India won six medals.