India made history on August 7th when Neeraj Chopra, at the age of 23, became the first Indian to obtain a gold medal in the Olympics in the athletics category. He fulfilled his aim with a tremendous throw of 87.58 metres in his second attempt in the men’s javelin throw event.
Chopra was born in Khandra village, Panipat, Haryana, on December 24, 1997, to Satish and Saroj Devi Kumar. He comes from a Haryanavi family of farmers. He is the eldest of three sisters. After graduating from Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College in Chandigarh, he studied and obtained a bachelor’s degree in arts from Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Jalandhar, Punjab.
Chopra’s father enrolled him in a local gym when he was ridiculed as a child because he was overweight. Chopra eventually enrolled in a gym in his district of Panipat, where a javelin thrower named Jaiveer Choudhary recognized his talent and became his first coach. Chopra was enrolled at the Tau Devi Lal Sports Complex in Panchkula, where he began training with Naseem Ahmed, after a successful year of training with his coach, Jaiveer. In 2014, Neeraj won his first international medal, a silver, in the Youth Olympics Qualification in Bangkok. He then achieved a tremendous world record in the junior category with a throw of 81.04 metres in the 2015 All India Inter-University Athletics Meet. Chopra was later recalled for a national-level training camp in 2015. He moved to Panchkula in early 2016 to train at NIS Patiala. Neeraj tied the Indian national record with a throw of 84.23 metres and won gold in the 2016 South Asian Games.
Chopra became the first Indian Olympian to win a gold medal in athletics and the first post-independence Indian Olympic medallist in athletics by winning the gold medal at the Olympics. After Abhinav Bindra, who won the gold medal in the men’s 10 m air rifle at the 2008 Summer Olympics, he is only the second Indian to win an individual Olympic gold medal.
Due to world wide recognition after winning the gold, Neeraj, experienced huge change in his life. Here are some of those things.
1. He was asked about marriage plans by Kapil Dev.
2. Huge spike in instagram followers. He had 200k Instagram followers which became 3 million in just two days.
3. Netizens compared Neeraj with Virat on basis of their appearance.
4. Neeraj Chopra was asked to act in him own biopic.
5. As he won the gold, the trolls raided Neeraj’s social media accounts and found tweets that supported PM Modi and the people started calling him ‘Sanghi’
6. Say ‘Neeraj’ five times and you will know why he won the gold medal. Said, Rajnikanth.
