India’s double Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra suffered heartbreak after failing to win men’s javelin event at the Doha Diamond League on Friday, May 16. Chopra was leading the event until the final round with a throw of 90.23m in the third round marking the first time in his career he has crossed the 90-metre mark.
However, Julian Weber threw 91.06m in his last attempt to steal the title from Chopra. This was also the first time that the German athlete breached the 90m mark. Anderson Peters of Granada finished third in the event. The other Indian in the event, Kishore Jena finished 8th with a best throw of 78.60m
Chopra set the tone early in the competition with a massive first-attempt throw of 88.44m, a world-leading mark at the time. This put him ahead of Grenada’s Anderson Peters (85.64m) and Trinidad and Tobago’s Keshorn Walcott (84.65m), both of whom registered season-best performances.
Despite a foul on his second attempt, Chopra remained in the lead. Then, in a landmark moment in the third round, he unleashed a phenomenal throw of 90.23m, breaking the elusive 90m barrier for the first time in his career.
His remaining attempts were 80.56m in the fourth round, while his last attempt was 88.20m. During the event Neeraj Chopra also become the 25th overall player and the third Asian in history to cross the 90m mark in javelin. Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem (92.97m) of Pakistan and Chao-Tsun Cheng (91.36m) of Chinese Taipei are the two other Asians to have breached the coveted mark.
