THE MAKING OF A CHAMPION

are no strangers to early exits from Olympic arenas, not counting the storied near misses of Milkha Singh, P.T. Usha and Anju George. Even those ‘almost-there’ stories are too few and far between. The question we got tired of asking was why a nation of a billion-plus cannot produce a track & field medal. On the day of his qualification for the finals of the men’s javelin event, Neeraj Chopra too left the stadium early. But his was the stride and demeanour of a man who had unfinished business. He had made short work of the qualification, with a monstrous first throw of 86.65 metres (the qualifying mark being 83.50 metres), topping the qualification charts and becoming the first Indian to make the final of the men’s javelin event. As he left the stadium, you could see a certain bounce, a slight swagger in his walk, but there wasn’t a trace of arrogance in it—this was self-belief.