Years ago in Panipat- Haryana, there lived a boy named Neeraj Chopra. His grandparents bought him a cute white kurta for Diwali. He happily wears it and goes out to play. He got mocked by others as “sarpanch”- fat one because of his overweight. At the age of 12, he was literally 90 kilos. Got hurt by this incident, he ran to his home crying. So his parents decided to send him to a Gym at the city of Panipat. Coincidently, there was a ground near it. He say people practicing. As he played around there, he was asked casually by someone to throw a javelin just for fun. Being an amateur throwing for the first time, he crossed a distance of 40 meters which clearly illustrated that he was born for Javelin throw. No one knew back then that this boy would win a gold medal for India in Tokyo Olympic 2020 at the age of 23. For over 100 years, No athlete could achieve this and this is India's second gold medal in individual competition. The story of Neeraj Chopra not only involves hard work but also pain, agony, sufferings.
For example, On 2019 May 4 the headlines of Hindustan Times said that Neeraj Chopra faces lengthy recovery after an elbow surgery. Johannes Vetter of German, the present king of Javelin throw has crossed 90 meters approximately 17 times. This Johannes Vetter was defeated by Neeraj Chopra and scored his gold. Neeraj Chopra threw the javelin to a distance of 87.58 meters. For the last 10 years, he had been working for this, he had been upgrading himself so that he could have enough self-confidence to face this stage.
He was born on 24th December 1997 in Panipat, Haryana. He was born in a very big joint family with him being the first son to his generation. Speaking of Very big Joint family, we all would have mistook him as one from rich Indian family which he was definitely not. He was from a very much financially depending family who worked hard for daily bread.
Recently, I read an BBC article mocking India for winning zero gold medals with such huge population. But now, Neeraj had changed the history. India has found it's new sports hero. Probably, his family would live happily ever after. All this is not because of just one throw, there lies a hard work of 10 years behind this. Javelin is not a very famous sport in India. But one throw had changed this. We all have our own talent. We all can bring pride to our nation.
Pursue what you dream !
