NEW DELHI: Neeraj Chopra throws hard and high to win the Javelin Gold and becomes the first Athletic gold medal winner of India in the Olympics to make the Tokyo 2020 Games India's best-ever Olympics campaign.
Chopra scripted history on Saturday by becoming independent India's first athlete to win a medal in the track and field discipline. English-Indian athlete Norman Pritchard had won two silver medals in the 1900 Games while representing India, which was then a British colony.
Neeraj Chopra won the country's seventh medal and first gold in this Olympics and joined shooter Abhinav Bindra (2008 Beijing Games) as India's individual gold winner in the showpiece.
With this, the country surpassed the previous best haul of six medals achieved in the 2012 London Games.
His first throw of 87.03m in the final was good enough to clinch the gold tonight, but he bettered it in the next attempt to 87.58m, which remained the best throw of the night.
The 23-year-old farmer's son from Khandra village near Panipat in Haryana produced a second-round throw of 87.58m in the finals to stun the athletics world and end India's 100-year wait for a track and field medal in the Olympics.