Neeraj Chopra has to settle on silver medal in men’s javelin throw event after Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem created a new Olympics record at the ongoing Paris Games on Thursday. He became the only Indian track and field to win two Olympic medals while the Pakistan’s Nadeem became his country’s first individual Olympic gold medalist.
Paris (France): India’s ‘golden boy’ Neeraj Chopra has to settle on silver medal in men’s javelin throw event after Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem created a new Olympics record at the ongoing Paris Games here on Thursday. With his silver, Chopra becomes first Indian track-and-field athlete to win two Olympic medals.
Neeraj recorded his season’s best throw of 89.45m but Nadeem destroyed his hopes of winning back-to-back gold medals after registering an Olympic record throw of 92.97m. In his sixth and final attempt, he recorded a throw of 91.79, which became his second best throw of the career.
Tokyo Olympics 2020 gold medalist Neeraj Chopra did’nt have a good start as he made a foul throw in his first attempt. Neeraj looked under pressure right after Arshad’s record throw and failed to manage the burden of the expectations, managing to register only one legal attempt. Out of the six attempts, five were fouls and three of which were unforced errors.
Neeraj looked very disappointed game despite registering his second best throw of 89.45m that eventually helped him to win a silver medal. It was also his best-ever throw in the Olympic Games as he went past 89.34m, which helped him seal the top spot in the qualification round on Tuesday.
The 26-year-old became the first Indian to clinch an Olympic Gold medal in a track and field event when he won the men’s javelin event in 2020 Tokyo Games with a best effort of 87.58m. With this silver, he also became the fifth Indian after Norman Pritchard, Sushil Kumar, PV Sindhu and Manu Bhaker to win more than one individual Olympic medals.He is the only track and field from India to win two medals at Olympics.
Neeraj’s Series: X, 89.45, X, X, X, X (X – Fouls)
Arshad’s Series: X, 92.97m, 88.72m, 79.40m, 84.87m, 91.79m
Eventually, Arshad Nadeem finished with two throws in excess of 90m as he finished his series with 91.79m and sealed a historic Gold medal for Pakistan. With this gold victory, Nadeem became the first individual gold medalist from Pakistan, the country which saw an Olympic gold medal coming home after 32 years. Earlier, the Pakistan hockey team had won the bronze medal in 1992 Barcelona Olympics, through its field hockey team.
Overall, Pakistan has only three individual medallists, in athletics, wrestling and boxing, with wrestler Muhammad Bashir winning the bronze medal in 1960, boxer Hussain Shah winning bronze at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and Nadeem winning the third this time in France.
Pakistan has now won 11 medals at the Olympics so far, which comprise four gold, three silver and four bronze medals. However, all of Pakistan’s gold medals had come through field hockey.
