Neeraj Chopra
Neeraj Chopra is an Indian javelin thrower. He has won gold medals at the Olympic Games, World Championships and Asian Games. Chopra has won the Diamond League once. He won the Olympic gold medal in 2020 and became the first Asian javelin thrower to do so. He became the first Asian to win a gold medal in javelin throw at the 2023 World Championships. Chopra finished in the top two in 26 consecutive tournaments from June 2021 to September 2025, the second longest such streak in history behind that of javelin world record holder Jan Železný.
Chopra is the first athletics gold medalist for India., he is one of only two Indians to have won an individual Olympic gold medal, the youngest-ever Indian Olympic gold medalist in an individual event and the only individual to have won gold on his Olympic debut. After his silver at the 2024 Olympics, he became one of five individual multiple Olympic medalists for India. He is the first Indian to win a gold medal at the World U20 Championships, where he set the current world U20 record throw of 86.48 m in 2016, also becoming the first Indian athlete to set a world record in athletics.
Early life
Family
Chopra was born on 24 December 1997 in a Haryanvi Ror agricultural family in Khandra village in Panipat district of Haryana. His mother Saroj Devi and father Satish Chopra are both farmers. He has two sisters Savita Chopra and Sangeeta Chopra.Education and early training
Chopra did his initial schooling from Bhartiya Vidya Niketan Public School, Panipat. After some locals teased him about his obesity, he enrolled in a gym in Panipat. While training there, he saw javelin throwers practising at the Shivaji Stadium and took up the sport. In 2010, he moved to Panchkula to train at the Tau Devi Lal Sports Complex, aged 13. After moving to Panchkula, he joined the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, Chandigarh, where he completed his schooling.Alongside his schooling, Chopra won several national javelin championships in 2012 and 2014. Based on his performance at sports tournaments, Chopra was recruited into the Indian Army in 2016, where he was selected for the Mission Olympics Wing training at the Army Sports Institute in Pune. In 2021, he enrolled at Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar, Punjab and then proceeded to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree.
Personal life
In January 2025, Chopra married former tennis player and coach Himani Mor.Career
Beginnings (2010–2012)
In 2010, Chopra took part in a trial at the Sports Authority of India centre in Panipat. On observing his ability to achieve good throws without any formal training, javelin thrower Jaiveer Singh started training him. He learned the basics of the sport from Singh and practised with athletes at Jalandhar. He finished third at the district event, and persuaded his family to let him train at the SAI centre to hone his abilities. After training at SAI for a year, the 13-year-old Chopra moved to train at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula, one of the only two facilities in Haryana with a synthetic runway. As the facility lacked a specialised javelin coach, he trained under Naseem Ahmad, a running coach.At the time, he and fellow javelin thrower Parminder Singh watched videos of Jan Zelezny to try and emulate his style. Initially, he achieved throws of around, but slowly increased his range. At the National Junior Athletics Championships held at Lucknow in October 2012, he won the gold medal with a new junior national record throw of.
International level emergence (2013–2016)
In 2013, Chopra competed in his first international competition, the World Youth Championships in Donetsk, Ukraine, where he finished 19th in the overall classification with a best throw of 66.75 m. He won his first international medal in 2014, a silver at the Youth Olympics Qualification in Bangkok. At the 2014 senior nationals, he achieved his first throw of over. In 2015, he broke the then world junior record at the 2015 All India Inter-University Athletics meet with a throw of, which was his first throw over. Chopra finished fifth at the 2015 National Games in Kerala. He also participated at the 2015 Asian Athletics Championships where he finished 9th with a best throw of 70.50 m. As a result of his performance, he was called to the national-level training camp at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala in early 2016. According to him, this was a turning point in his career, as he received better facilities, better food and an improved standard of training from what was available at Panchkula. Also, training with national level javelin throwers helped boost his morale. He was assigned 2010 Commonwealth Games bronze medalist Kashinath Naik as his coach.File: Neeraj Chopra Of India, Ahmed B A Of Qatar And Davinder Singh Of India.jpg|thumb|left|Chopra won the gold medal in the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships in Bhubaneshwar.
At the 2016 South Asian Games, Chopra achieved a new personal best when he won gold with a throw of in Guwahati on 9 February. After the event, he began training under Australian coach Gary Calvert, who was appointed as the national javelin coach. He also sustained a back injury in April 2016 during the Federation Cup in New Delhi, which affected his performance. In July 2016, he won the gold medal at the 2016 IAAF World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland with a throw to set a new world junior record and became the first Indian to hold the national senior record and world junior record simultaneously. Although his record throw was above the qualification standard for the 2016 Olympics, he failed to qualify as the cut-off date had already elapsed. In September 2016, he left the Netaji Subhas Institute to train at the SAI centre in Bangalore. In December 2016, he was formally inducted as a Junior Commissioned Officer in the Indian Army. He was offered a rank of Naib Subedar in the Rajputana Rifles. He subsequently received extended leave to continue his training. He won gold in the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships at Bhubaneshwar with a throw of.
Asian and Commonwealth champion (2017–2020)
In the 2017 World Championships in August, Chopra finished 15th in the overall classification with a best throw of. On 24 August, he suffered a groin injury during the Zürich Weltklasse. He sustained the injury during his third attempt of before he fouled his fourth attempt and skipped the last two. His first and best throw of gave him a seventh-place finish. He attributed his injury to a heavy schedule and the lack of a proper diet and rest. As a result of his injury, he withdrew from competition for the remainder of 2017. During recovery, he spent a month at the Joint Services Wing sports institute at Vijayanagar. In November 2017, he left for Offenburg in Germany to train with Werner Daniels, whom he had briefly worked with before the 2017 World Championships as his former coach Calvert had left India in May due to disputes over his contract. During his stay there, he focused on strength training and honed his technique with adjustments to his stance to keep his hand raised higher during throws to improve his range.File:The President, Shri Ram Nath Kovind presenting the Arjuna Award, 2018 to Shri Neeraj Chopra for Athletics, in a glittering ceremony, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in in New Delhi on September 25, 2018.JPG|thumb|left|Chopra receiving the Arjuna Award from Ram Nath Kovind, President of India, on 25 September 2018
In the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Chopra registered a season-best effort of to win the gold medal. He became the first Indian to win the javelin throw at the Commonwealth Games. In May 2018, he bettered his national record at the Qatar Athletic Super Grand Prix with a throw of. In August 2018, he made his debut at the Asian Games, and was the flag-bearer for India during the 2018 Asian Games Parade of Nations. On 27 August, he won the gold medal at the Games with a new Indian record throw of. This was also India's first ever gold medal in the javelin throw at the Asian Games.
Chopra was the only track and field athlete that year to be recommended by the Athletics Federation of India for the country's highest sports award, the Major Dhyanchand Khel Ratna. He was awarded the Arjuna Award in September 2018. The army rewarded him with an out-of-turn promotion to subedar in November. In preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, he trained with German coach Uwe Hohn, South African biomechanics expert Klaus Bartonietz and physiotherapist Ishaan Marwaha. Hohn worked on refining Chopra's throwing technique, which he described as "wild".
Injury and comeback (2019–2020)
Chopra missed the 2019 World Championships in Doha due to injury. On 3 May 2019, he underwent surgery to remove bone spurs in his right elbow in Mumbai. After a period of recuperation and rehabilitative training in Patiala and Vijayanagar, he travelled to South Africa in November 2019 to train under Bartonietz. After a 16-month hiatus, he returned to international competition in January 2020. He registered a throw of in the Central North West Athletics League Meeting in Potchefstroom, South Africa. This helped him achieve the automatic qualification standard of and secure a place for the 2020 Olympics. He travelled to Turkey for training, but was forced to return to India in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Due to the pandemic and lockdown in India, Chopra spent the next year training at Patiala. In late 2020, the Athletics Federation of India and the Government of Odisha arranged a training camp at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar, which he attended from December 2020 to February 2021. On 5 March 2021, he again bettered his own national record with a throw of, which ranked him third-best internationally for the season. He applied to travel to Sweden for training, but faced difficulties due to the effects of the pandemic. After weeks of attempting to secure a visa, he was cleared to travel to Europe with his coach following the intervention of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and the Ministry of External Affairs. He flew to Paris on 5 June 2021 for a mandatory quarantine period before travelling to Portugal for the Meeting Cidade de Lisboa. He opened his international season of 2021 there with a throw of, which earned him the gold medal. He remained in Lisbon until 19 June before travelling to Uppsala in Sweden for training.
In June 2021, Chopra competed at the Karlstad GP in Karlstad, Sweden, which he won with a sub-par throw of. He attributed his reduced performance to a tendency to throw the javelin higher than he wanted to, along with having to use a different javelin as his own was unavailable. He won bronze at a subsequent meet in Kuortane, Finland with a throw of. Following the Kuortane Games, he travelled to Lucerne to compete in the Spitzen Leichtathletik Luzern, but decided to withdraw due to fatigue. Later, he attempted to secure a visa for the Diamond League meeting at Gateshead on 13 July, but faced difficulties due to the pandemic and instead continued training in Uppsala.