India's Neeraj Chopra storms into World Championships final, qualifies for Paris Olympics
With an 88.77m throw, Neeraj also earned an automatic qualification for the 2024 Paris Olympics, the qualifying mark for which is 85.50m.
Neeraj Chopra produced his season's best and the fourth-best performance of his career to qualify for the men's javelin throw final at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary on Friday.
The Olympic champion threw a humongous 88.77m in his first attempt to breeze into the final, which will take place on Sunday. The qualification mark was 83m. With this throw, Neeraj also earned an automatic qualification for the 2024 Paris Olympics, the qualifying mark for which is 85.50m. The qualifying window began on 1 July.
To put Neeraj's effort into perspective, Germany's Julian Webber was the only other athlete in the qualification set A to have breached the 80m mark in the first round of throws. None of the other 15 athletes in the same set were able to earn automatic qualification even after three attempts. Now, they will have to depend on the outcome of the qualification set B. If the majority of them fail to breach the qualification mark of 83m then the best 12 combining both groups will advance to the final.
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DP Manu, the other India athlete, in the same group finished third with a best attempt of 81.31m behind Webber (82.39m) and has a great chance of qualifying for finals unless nine other athletes throw more than him in qualification B.
Defending champions Anderson Peters was all but knocked out with a disappointing best of 78.49 after three attempts. He finished in the seventh spot in Group A and will have to depend on a poor show from most of the athletes in group B to make it through to the finals.
One of the major reasons for the below-par show by the athletes was the heaviness in the air and the breeze blowing from opposite directions, making it difficult to achieve greater distance with the javelin. It, however, had no impact on Neeraj, who nearly broke his personal best of 89.94m, in one attempt.
The silver medallist of the last edition of the World Championships is eyeing gold this time around to complete a full quota of titles in his illustrious career. Neeraj won an Olympic gold in Tokyo. He is an Asian Games and Commonwealth Games gold medalist and is also a Diamond League champion. The 25-year-old came very close to winning the World Championship last year in Oregon but came second to Anderson Peters.
