Neeraj Chopra won India’s first Olympic gold in athletics with a throw of 87.58 metres in Tokyo on 7 August 2021. He followed it with a world title in Budapest two years later and an Olympic silver in Paris, and in May 2025 he finally cleared 90 metres. For most of a decade he has been the man every Indian thrower is measured against, and the one track and field athlete in the country whose name is known in almost every household.
Name: Neeraj Chopra | Born: 24 December 1997, Khandra, Panipat, Haryana | Sport: Athletics | Event: Javelin throw
A village boy with a world junior record
Neeraj grew up in Khandra, a village near Panipat in Haryana, and took up the javelin as a teenager. He had a natural feel for the event and progressed fast. In 2016 he won the South Asian Games in Guwahati with 82.23 metres, and a few months later he went to the World Under-20 Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
There he threw 86.48 metres to win gold and set a world under-20 record. No Indian had won a world title at any level in athletics before. The mark was good enough to have placed him high in most senior competitions of the time, and it brought him a job in the Indian Army as a Naib Subedar.
Asian and Commonwealth gold
The senior titles came quickly. He won the 2017 Asian Championships in Bhubaneswar with 85.23 metres. In April 2018 he took Commonwealth Games gold on the Gold Coast with 86.47 metres, and in August he won the Asian Games in Jakarta with 88.06 metres, a national record at the time.
An elbow injury and surgery then kept him out for much of 2019, and the pandemic wiped out most of 2020. He came into the Olympic year with very little competition behind him.
Tokyo 2021
None of that showed in Tokyo. He topped qualifying with his first throw and then led the final from the first round. His second throw of 87.58 metres was never beaten. Independent India had never won an Olympic medal of any colour in athletics; Neeraj delivered gold. It was the country’s second individual Olympic gold in any sport, after Abhinav Bindra’s in Beijing.
The reception at home was huge. The day of the final, 7 August, was later marked as National Javelin Day by the Athletics Federation of India.
World champion and Diamond League winner
He kept winning. At the 2022 World Championships in Eugene he took silver with 88.13 metres, and in September 2022 he won the Diamond League Final in Zurich with 88.44 metres. In August 2023 he became world champion in Budapest with 88.17 metres, the first Indian to win a world senior title in athletics. Weeks later he retained his Asian Games title in Hangzhou with 88.88 metres.
Paris silver and the 90-metre mark
At the Paris Olympics in August 2024 he threw a season’s best of 89.45 metres, but Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem produced an Olympic record of 92.97 metres to take gold. Neeraj’s silver made him India’s first athlete with two Olympic medals in track and field.
For years he had been asked about 90 metres. On 16 May 2025, at the Doha Diamond League, he threw 90.23 metres for a new national record, although Germany’s Julian Weber beat him on the night with 91.06 metres. Later that year he won the first Neeraj Chopra Classic in Bengaluru with 86.18 metres. The 2025 World Championships in Tokyo were a disappointment, as he finished eighth with 84.03 metres and his run of podium finishes at global events came to an end.
Change of coach and a hard 2026
Neeraj had trained under the Czech great Jan Zelezny, the world record holder, from 2024. They parted by mutual agreement in January 2026, and he returned to his early coach, Jaiveer Singh Chaudhary. At the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on 31 July 2026 he won silver with a season’s best of 85.83 metres behind Sri Lanka’s Rumesh Pathirage. He finished second in Lausanne with 88.05 metres but then tore an ankle ligament in training. On 29 August 2026 he was ruled out for the rest of the season, which meant missing the Asian Games and the Diamond League Final.
Away from the track, the Army made him a Subedar Major, and in May 2025 he was given the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Territorial Army.
Career record and honours
- Olympic Games: gold, Tokyo 2020 (87.58 m); silver, Paris 2024 (89.45 m)
- World Championships: gold, Budapest 2023 (88.17 m); silver, Eugene 2022 (88.13 m)
- Diamond League Final: winner, Zurich 2022 (88.44 m)
- Asian Games: gold, Jakarta 2018 (88.06 m) and Hangzhou 2023 (88.88 m)
- Commonwealth Games: gold, Gold Coast 2018 (86.47 m); silver, Glasgow 2026 (85.83 m)
- Asian Championships: gold, Bhubaneswar 2017
- World Under-20 Championships: gold and world U20 record, Bydgoszcz 2016 (86.48 m)
- Personal best: 90.23 m, Doha, May 2025 (national record)
- Arjuna Award, 2018
- Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, 2021
- Padma Shri, Param Vishisht Seva Medal and Vishisht Seva Medal, 2022
- Honorary Lieutenant Colonel, Territorial Army, 2025
