NEERAJ, AFTER GOLD: ‘SLEPT WITH IT NEXT TO MY PILLOW’
What he has done is keep the medal close to him. During the interview, he was wearing it.
“I kept it close to my pillow and went to sleep,” he said.
For the last two weeks, Chopra had stayed away from his phone and away from social media so he could keep his mind in training and on the event. He spent hours every day visualising his throw.
“I did not want to talk to anyone or read messages,” he said. When the big day came, Chopra felt ready.
“It was that time yesterday for me,” he said, “where the work I’ve put in for four years, this time five years, all got compressed into one day.”
In early 2019, a time when Chopra was on a winning spree with some massive throws, he injured his elbow and had to undergo a surgery to his throwing arm. “At that time, I was worried about how it would go after surgery. It was my first surgery,” Chopra said.
“I didn’t know if it would be successful or not. In our sport, if there is any problem with the elbow, we can’t throw.”
But, through the long rehab that saw Chopra out of competition for almost a year, he said he kept himself positive and took it as an opportunity to learn and improve on various aspects of the game.
“I told myself whatever body part I needed to work on and improve in terms of fitness, this surgery has given me the opportunity to do that,” he said.
“After the injury I started using my mind more in sports.”
When he made his comeback in January 2020, he sealed his spot for Tokyo in his first competition. Then the pandemic hit, and Chopra found himself out of action again for almost a month.
On his first competition after sporting events restarted in India, he threw his personal best (88.07m) to rewrite his own national record. On Saturday, Chopra believed, walking into the Olympic stadium for the biggest event in his life, that he would rewrite that record again. That didn’t happen, but it did not stop Chopra from writing history.
“After the event there was a feeling that a journey has been completed,” Chopra said.