THE boy grew heavy on the milk, cream and butter of his grandmother’s doting.
By age 13, Neeraj Chopra weighed nearly 86kg (190lb), making him one of the biggest boys in his tiny farming village.
His father and uncles urged him to join a gym to lose weight. By chance, he saw a javelin being thrown and noticed that, in flight, it seemed to shimmy like a fish through water. He was smitten.
A decade after that improbable beginning, Neeraj won the javelin competition at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
It was the first gold medal won by India in track and field, considered the marquee sport of the Summer Games, and only the country’s second in an individual event in more than a century of Olympic competition.
Neeraj’s triumph inspired athletes across India, the world’s most populous nation. And as it raised the country’s dreams for more medals at this year’s Paris Olympics, it also helped to stoke a national ambition for something even bigger:
A mural honours Neeraj Chopra outside Shivaji Stadium in Panipat where he trains. — NYT
a chance to host the Summer Games for the first time.
In October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Mumbai, India, that India would “leave no stone unturned” in seeking to host the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
That quest could yield another transformative moment for India: a huge national effort both to engage a vast youth population in sports and to leverage one of the last truly global stages as a validation of India’s economic, political and technological primacy.
If India’s bid to host the Games succeeds, the 2036 Olympics will follow a template established over the last 60 years by three other Asian nations – Japan (Tokyo 1964), South Korea (Seoul 1988) and China (Beijing 2008) – for whom the Summer Olympics served as a symbol of transition and emergence.
“It would be the moment that we’ve truly arrived,” said Abhinav Bindra, who won India’s first individual gold, in shooting, at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Along the road into Khandra, a village of about 3,000 people in the rice and wheat fields about 70 miles northwest of New Delhi, two signs announce Neeraj’s status as an Olympic champion.
Photographs of him adorn the courtyard walls and the gate to Sanskriti Public School, to which Neeraj has donated javelins and other sporting equipment.
“It seemed next to impossible that anyone from here could win an Olympic medal,” said Tushar Chopra, 15, a distant cousin and an athlete at the school.
“Now, with Neeraj, it seems within our reach.”
Artwork depicting the Olympic rings with Chopra at his home in Khandra. — NYT
Neeraj’s brilliant, unlikely career illustrates the growing embrace and possibility of Olympic sports in India, where, as recently as the late 1990s and early 2000s, some top Olympic hopefuls lived in sheds built for animals and in train cars while administrators took up residence in luxury homes.
“So many people ask, ‘Who are your idols?’” Neeraj, now 26, said in an interview at a track meet in Eugene, Oregon, in September. “My own journey motivates me.”
Unlike China, which became an Olympic power by using a centralised system of identifying, recruiting and training athletes on an industrial scale, India relied for decades on a patchwork approach directed by its 28 diverse states.
Among the most dedicated to sports is the northern state of Haryana, which includes Khandra. An agricultural region that accounts for about 2% of India’s population, it produced nearly 25% of the country’s 120-plus competitors at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Haryana is known primarily for its wrestlers and boxers, athletes of robust strength. The state government encourages sports participation by offering jobs, land and cash prizes to medal winners.
Sports also provide refuge and liberation for women in a conservative, patriarchal area where girls in some villages are not permitted to wear jeans or have cellphones.
Yet there was (and is) no stadium or youth development system in Khandra.
Neeraj began attending a gym in the nearby town of Panipat and running on the track at an adjacent stadium there.
One day, he noticed an older athlete, Jai Chaudhary, throwing a javelin and tried it himself. There was no dream of the Olympics then, Neeraj said. Only a teenager’s curiosity.
Without regular access to formal coaching, Neeraj began to teach himself. To build stamina, he sometimes jogged behind an uncle’s motorbike, wearing the uncle’s sneakers, a size too small, and enduring blisters to complete his workouts.
A farm tractor joins the collection of cars owned by Chopra. — NYT
He honed his throwing technique by watching cellphone videos of Jan Zelezny, a three-time Olympic champion from the Czech Republic, and shared a javelin with others in training sessions. (First, though, they used a pump to water the field’s hard, dry ground, fearing that if they did not, their precious lances might shatter upon landing.)
Eventually, Neeraj advanced to regional and national training centres. At 18, he set a world junior record. By then, India’s overall development had jolted the country’s sporting bureaucracy to life.
Now a sculpted 86kg, with an amiable handsomeness that has been featured on the cover of Vogue India, Neeraj is one of his country’s most celebrated athletes.
He has nine million followers on Instagram and counts Visa, Coca-Cola and Tata Life Insurance among his sponsors, cultivating a personal brand that has pushed his wealth into millions of dollars.
Neeraj ’s gold medal in Tokyo remains a transformative moment in places like Panipat. After he won, a local coach said, roughly 100 boys and girls came to the stadium where he got his start, eager to try the javelin.
Replica javelins made of bamboo appeared in stores. And India’s track and field federation began to celebrate Aug 7, the day of Neeraj ’s victory in Tokyo, as National Javelin Day.
The eastern state of Odisha has since built India’s first indoor track stadium.
And at least seven foreign coaches have been hired to help prepare the nation’s runners, jumpers and throwers for the Paris Olympics.
The investment is already yielding returns. India set a national record by winning 107 medals at the 2023 Asian Games.
In the javelin competition at the world track and field championships in Budapest last summer, Neeraj finished first, and two teammates were fifth and sixth.
India’s men’s 4x400m team, prepared by a Jamaican who once helped coach Usain Bolt, set an Asian record in reaching the final.
Success, suddenly, feels infectious.
“Now,” Neeraj said, “I can say, ‘If I can do it, you can also do it.’” — NYT
