Athletics Federation of India (AFI) president Adille Sumariwalla was surprised by the intense javelin throw competition in the final of the Paris Olympics, where the top five throws were above 87.58 m, which won Neeraj the gold at the Tokyo Games.
In the final, Neeraj Chopra logged the second-best throw of his career to date and the season’s best to take the silver medal, finishing behind Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem, who won the gold medal with an Olympic record-shattering 92.97m attempt.
Moreover, Arshad crossed the 90m mark twice to set a massive Olympic record, held by Andreas Thorkildsen of Norway (90.57m in Beijing 2008), closing the night with a massive 91.79m throw on his final attempt after his gold winning throw.
“I’ve never seen a contest like this ever in my life and throwing over 90m twice in six throws, you don’t see that too often. Four people are logged 87m and above, whoch I never saw before. So I think this was a very, very tough competition,” Sumariwalla told IANS.
The top five throws in the men’s javelin final all surpassed the 87.58m that earned Neeraj gold in Tokyo, which highlighted the intense level of competition at the Stade de France on Thursday night.
The AFI chief noted that despite not achieving the 90m mark in the group where five throwers have already achieved the milestone, Neeraj won the silver and he praised the star Indian athlete for his performance after battling with an injury.
“What Neeraj did today was two meters more than what he did in Tokyo to win the gold. He improved by 2 metres, but he had to settle for a silver because somebody has threw over 90m, Neeraj has never thrown 90m, remember that? But five people in this group have thrown over 90 meters, yet Neeraj got silver. He has just recovered from an injury. I think he’s done phenomenally well and I’m very, very proud of him,” he said.
Speaking about the growth of Indian athletics, Sumariwalla emphasised that success will come if we follow the right process and system.
“We have a strategic plan in place, which is a 12-year plan, about 10 years are over and you see the results that we are getting… In hindsight, I never predict medals. Every time they ask me how many medals, what is the colour of Neeraj’s medal?, I tell them I am not an astrologer,” said the 66-year-old former Olympian, who represented India at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
“But now when you go back and count your medals, so if you looked at the last three Asian Games, it was 13 medals, 20 medals, and 29 medals. Commonwealth Games, 3 medals, 3 medals, 8 medals. Olympic Games, no medals, no medals, medal, medal. World Championship, no medal, silver medal, gold medal. In the top-6, there are three Indians in the World Championships in the javelin throw. Relay team, ranked 5th in the world, broke the Asian record twice in less than 24 hours,” said Sumariwalla.
“So there is a progress and it will take time. Like I have always kept saying, we are not something like an electric switch that you can put on a light and turn off a light. There is a process, there is a system. And if you use the process and system, you will be able to go down that road and it will give you success,” he concluded.