Neeraj Chopra fight with an adductor muscle niggle throughout the year and it also affected Neeraj Chopra performance at both the Olympics and the DL finale, where he also competed with a fractured left hand. India’s two-time Olympic medal-winning Javelin throw star Neeraj Chopra on Friday (27th September,2024) said a podium finish in the Tokyo World Championships 2025 is the next big target on his mind going forward.
In Brussels, Neeraj Chopra, the 26-year-old is back in the country after winding up his season with a second-place finish at the Diamond League finale. This was after he become the first Indian track-and-field athlete to maintain successive Olympic medals by adding a silver in Paris to the significant gold clinched in Tokyo.
Neeraj Chopra said to PTI on the side lines of a conference on ‘ Mission Olympics 2036’ arranged at the Sports University of Haryana.
The World Championship is organized to be held from September 13 to 21 next year 2025.Neeraj Chopra’s performance at both the Olympics and the DL finale affected due to his adductor muscle niggle through which he suffered throughout the year. He also suffered with a fractured left hand. He had spoken about consulting doctors at the end of season to decide whether to go for a surgery to solve this problem.
On questioning about his fitness, Chopra played down concerns and also stated that he will look to improve his technique. The Haryana’s young boy is trained by renowned German biomechanics specialist Klaus Bartonietz.
” It was an injury-plagued year but injury is fine now, I will be 100% fit for the new season,” Chopra declared.
He told ” Technical issues are also there but we will work on them. I will look to improve my technique. I do like to train in India but when competitions start, I prefer to train abroad,”.
On India’s performance in Paris Olympics which yielded six medals but no gold medal this time Neeraj pointed out that the country could have got more as reflected by the half a dozen fourth place finishes.
“There were a lot of fourth positions(But) this time, we had a very good performance in the Paralympics and won several medals.” Chopra added.