India’s two-time Olympic medallist javelin throw star Neeraj Chopra has qualified for the Diamond League’s season finale after finishing fourth in the overall standings at the end of its 14 series meetings across the world. The DL final is set to run from September 13-14 in Brussels.
Chopra accumulated 14 points from his two second-place finishes in the one-day meets held in Doha and Lausanne. He skipped the last series meet in Zurich on Thursday.
The 26-year-old Indian is two points adrift of Czech Republic’s Jakub Vadlech. Grenada’s Anderson Peters and German star Julian Weber occupy the top two spots with 29 and 21 points respectively. Peters had pipped Weber in the Zurich meet.
Moldova’s Andrian Mardare (13 points) and Japan’s Roderick Genki Dean (12 points) are the others in the top six to cement their berths in Brussels.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem, who won gold in the Paris Olympics with a mammoth throw of 92.97 metres, was out of the top six with only five points.
For Chopra, who won gold in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and added a silver to his kitty in the Paris edition last month, he has been struggling with his fitness this season. Neeraj, who is currently training in Switzerland, spoke about his struggles with a long-standing groin injury, and said that he will consult a doctor and decide on getting operated after the season ends with the DL final.
The Panipat lad had finished second in the Lausanne Diamond leg, bested by Peters, who threw 90.61m.
Chopra had won the Diamond League Final in 2022 and was a runner-up to Jakub Vadlech in 2023. He set a national record of 89.94 at the Stockholm leg of the Diamond League in 2022 and landed his career’s second-best of 89.49m at the Lausanne meet last month. His silver-winning effort in Paris was an impressive 89.45 metres.
The DL finale will mark the end of Chopra’s season before he takes the long flight back home.