Neeraj Chopra Set To Resume Olympic Build-up At Paavo Nurmi Games In Finland

27.06.2024 - 00:05 sports.ndtv.com

Forced into a short break to mend a niggle, Olympic and world champion javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra will return to competitive action at the Paavo Nurmi Games here on Tuesday against a stellar field, hoping to continue his build-up to Paris Games with renewed vigour.

The 26-year-old superstar, the lone Indian in the field here, will be up against German teenaged sensation Max Dehning, who is the youngest member of the coveted 90m club, which Chopra is aspiring to enter.

The 19-year-old is being seen as a major competition for Chopra when he defends his Tokyo Games gold medal in Paris. Local favourite Oliver Helander, who had beaten the Indian in the 2022 edition of the one-day competition, will also be there.

The Indian won a silver medal in 2022 with a throw of 89.30m, which was a personal best at that time. Chopra improved that mark to 89.94m at the Stockholm leg of the Diamond League in the same year.

athletics Olympics UPS Action Neeraj Chopra Jakub Vadlejch Anderson Peters Finland Germany India Trinidad And Tobago Grenada

One Olympic medal is all it takes to raise the profile of a sport and if the colour happens to be gold, it is just icing on the cake. Ask the practitioners of track-and-field disciplines in India, who were the biggest beneficiaries of government funding in this Olympic cycle after javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra's top finish in the Tokyo edition three years ago. According to official data from the Sports Authority of India's (SAI) Mission Olympic Cell (MOC), which is available with PTI, the government has spent a whopping Rs 96.08 crore for athletics.

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Arshad Nadeem, one of star Indian javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra's fiercest competitors in international competitions, will head an 18-member Pakistan contingent to the Paris Olympics with the hope of clinching the elusive medal for his country at the quadrennial showpiece. The Pakistan Olympic Association on Monday announced the contingent comprising seven athletes and 11 officials, including coaches in four disciplines. Besides Nadeem, Pakistan's best hope in athletics, the other athletes are shooter Kishmala Talat, sprinter Faiqa Riaz and swimmer Jehanara Nabi, among others.

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Indian cricket's reigning superstar Virat Kohli has urged the nation to get behind its Olympic-bound contingent, asking the fans to join him in supporting the athletes as "they inch closer to the podium with dogged determination" in the quadrennial showpiece starting July 26 in Paris. In a little over a minute long video post on social media, featuring some Paris-bound athletes like javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra and boxing hope Nishant Dev, Kohli said it is time for India to be recognised as a global sporting powerhouse.

Indian Athletics Team To Train At 3 Overseas Sites For Final Olympics Preparation

The 30-member Indian athletics team for the Olympics will train at three different venues abroad in their last leg of preparations before assembling in Paris on July 28, four days before the start of track and field competitions. The Olympic Sports Center in Spala, Poland; Antalya in Turkey; and St Moritz in Switzerland are the three foreign destinations where Indian athletes will train in their last leg of preparations. "The members of the national athletics team will be training at different venues to prepare for the Olympic Games, but will have to assemble in Paris on July 28," chief coach Radhakrishnan Nair said.

Neeraj Chopra Reveals Paris Diamond League Wasn't Part Of His Competition Calendar

Olympic and world champion javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra on Wednesday clarified that Sunday's Paris Diamond League was never a part of his competition calendar this year. The statement came after a media report stated that Chopra pulled out of the event due to the adductor niggle that has been troubling him for the past couple of months. The 26-year-old took to 'X' to say that there was no question of a withdrawal when he had not even entered his name.