CHOPRA Neeraj

General
TECHNIQUE, EQUIPMENT, AND COACHING CHANGES
After he missed time in 2019 with an elbow injury, he parted ways with coach Uwe Hohn and began training with another German coach, Klaus Bartonietz. He then focused on rectifying a technique issue that was causing his throws to drift left, and when competition was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, he switched from Nemeth javelins to Nordic javelins. "It requires a lot of work to get the line and direction right on a Nordic javelin, but once you perfect the line, it can go further than a Nemeth one." He went on to win gold at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. (olympics, 07 Aug 2021)

MOVE TO THE UNITED STATES
In late 2021 he decided to move to the United States of America and begin training at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center in California. He said a reason for the move was so he could avoid distractions from training. "It was very cold in India and to be honest, there were many wedding invitations as well. It was the marriage season in India in December [2021]. There are weddings in [my] family as well. They wanted me to come. When we begin training we can focus on just one thing, that is training hard. You are not allowed to go anywhere. This is the athlete life. The focus is on sports. Here [Chula Vista], I am focusing just on that. In India, I don't get that." (zeenews, 31 Dec 2021)

ARMY
In 2016 he joined the Indian Army through a sports quota programme. (vogue, 05 Nov 2021)

He became the first male athletics competitor representing India to win a medal at the world championships when he claimed silver in javelin at the 2022 edition of the tournament in Eugene, OR, United States of America. The following month, he became the first athlete [male or female] representing India to win a gold medal at a Diamond League meet when he was victorious in javelin at the Athletissima in Lausanne, Switzerland. (SportsDeskOnline, 30 Aug 2022; olympics, 27 Aug 2022; timesofindia, 24 Jul 2022)

He became the first athlete representing India to win a gold medal in athletics at the Olympic Games when he was victorious in javelin at the 2020 Games in Tokyo. (SportsDeskOnline, 20 Jan 2022; olympics, 07 Aug 2021)

He became the first athlete representing India to win gold in javelin at the Asian Games when he claimed victory at the 2018 Games in Indonesia. The same year, he had become the first athlete representing India to win gold in javelin at the Commonwealth Games, with his triumph in Gold Coast, QLD, Australia. (SportsDeskOnline, 30 Mar 2020; olympicchannel, 08 Dec 2019)

He became the first Indian competitor to win a junior world title in athletics when he claimed gold in javelin at the 2016 World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland. (SportsDeskOnline, 14 Mar 2018)