A touchy teenager, the ‘sarpanch’, good friend, foodie… and now Neeraj is an Olympic champion.💗
A HAPPIEST MOMENT IN OUR
COUNTRY!!🙌
PROUD ON YOU OUR WORLD CHAMPION BOY!!
Neeraj Chopra did not just win a gold medal, flinging the javelin a staggering 87.58m to top the charts in Tokyo, but vaulted himself into history books as well as the consciousness of a medal-starved nation. It would go down, to date, as the most historic of medals in India’s Olympic history. Perhaps, the most historic in the nation’s sporting history. The gold, a historic first for the country in track and field, the second for an individual ever and the first since Abhinav Bindra’s in 2008, would also ensure India’s richest-ever tally (seven).
Much before he won the country’s first-ever track and field medal, they used to call Neeraj the village headman in Khandra, near Panipat. What started as a joke turned out prophetic. It’s one Neeraj story, his uncle Bhim Chopra never tires of narrating.
His story is as much endearing as it is inspiring. While still in school, Neeraj once came home crying. It was very soon after he had rushed out of his house, excited to show his sparkling white new kurta-pyjama to his friends. A stray taunt by one of his playmates would make Neeraj a butt of jokes among pals. The incident would also change his life and give him an apt nickname for the rest of his life.
0 Comments