27 August,2023 07:05 AM IST | Budapest | Sundeep Misra
Neeraj Chopra during the men’s javelin throw qualification at Budapest on Thursday. Pic/AFP
It has the fanciful quality of fiction. More so like a fable. Its end may not, eventually, match the start. If it does, understand, the sporting landscape may yet again alter; like when it changed in the evening of June 25th, 1983 (India winning the 1983 cricket World Cup), or on August 11, 2008, (Abhinav Bindra winning Olympic gold) when conversations started and stirred around a 10m air rifle and August 7th, 2021 (Neeraj Chopra, Olympic javelin gold), when one of the protagonists of (this) fable, mutated it, or more so shook India out of its reverie. Where the javelin from just being a spear, an unknown object became a vehicle for aspiration and ambition, fuelled by the energy of thousands of youngsters, eager to climb to the top of the javelin pole.
And, we still could have been four in the final; Rohit Yadav's elbow surgery ruling him out of the World Championships, after having qualified. Rohit's personal best is 83.40 metre.
Like âOppenheimer' did for the movies, the javelin has saved India's box-office at the World Championships. The podium is still a day away, yet reaching a final, when for India, the event actually started at the 2017 World Championships (no World Championship before had an Indian javelin thrower) with Chopra, who failed to make it to the final and Davinder Singh Kang, who made it, is still a big deal. Chopra, constantly goes back to 2017 as one of his biggest learning experiences in how one needs to shut out the competition, signifying the importance of that one âbig' throw and if it is your first throw, so much the better.
Chopra's search is for that one Promethean performance, a constant exploration to expand his own ability. To uncork that one throw that in a single moment, erases the 90-mark bogey, and frees him from the shackles of that one lingering question - it is also true that winning gold medals is the stamp that really matters; to be an Olympic Champion, World Champion (hopefully on Sunday) and a Diamond League winner; the rest Asian Games gold, Commonwealth Games gold and an Asian Athletic Championship gold have already been accomplished. Yet, when he speaks of Czech superstar Jan Zelezny, four-time Olympic medallist (three gold, one silver) and five-time World Championships medallist (three gold, two bronze), there is an awe, a reverence that shows in his eyes, his words, haltingly paying obeisance to the greatest javelin thrower of all time - the holder of the World Championship record of 92.80; World Record of 98.48.
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It is difficult to enter an athlete's mind. Chopra's must be a labyrinthine network of thoughts, processes, sessions; like touching a TV screen with millions of programming hours. However, on Sunday, it would be one lineated line of thinking, all those hundreds of hours, broken into six throws towards building a legacy.
For DP Manu and Kishore Jena, the first World Championships is about holding yourself together. Nerves would be galloping away like a racehorse. Jena, 27, knows to create an impact, he would have to better his personal best of 84.38. Manu, 23, with a personal best of 84.35 will have to go beyond; both will have to shrug off temperance and embrace the unknown.
Standing in the way would be Germany's Julian Weber, who qualified with a throw of 82.39, Czechoslovakia's Jakub Vadlejch (83.50) and Pakistan's CWG winner Arshad Nadeem, man with the 90m throw, who qualified for the final with a third throw of 86.79.
Yet, these are all numbers from two qualifying groups. A World Championship final is like climbing into a deep shaft in search of gold - Sunday will reveal who finds it or doesn't.
