Neeraj Chopra won the Gold medal in the men's javelin throw event with an 87.58 metres throw in his second attempt.
It has happened, it has finally happened. What India has rued for years - an Olympic medal in Track and Field has finally happened. India's Neeraj Chopra won a Gold medal in the men's javelin throw event with an 87.58-metre throw in his second attempt. Neeraj, who was in the second position in the chronology started the event with a stupendous throw of 87.02 metres at the Olympics Stadium in the final on Saturday.
With these two throws, Neeraj had almost confirmed a medal for India as he bettered his 86.6-metre throw in the qualifying round and many believed that if he equals that mark in the final, he could win a medal. But it was just the start.
However, it felt like it was Neeraj's day and not for anyone else as the medal favourite, Germany's Johannes Vetter as after a couple of throws of sub-82, he failed to throw it more than that and remained at No 9 and failed to qualify for top eight.
Finland's Lassi Etelatalo started with two throws of around 79 metres and qualified for the next round with an 83.28-metre throw, but couldn't go beyond that.
Pakistan's Arshad Nadeem, another top-scorer in the qualifying round, after a decent start with 82.40 even after it didn't come out of his hand as he would have liked to, bettered it with 84.62 in his third throw and qualified for the top 8 at fifth position, but couldn't go beyond that.
However, it was the Czech Republic duo of Jakub Vadlejch and Vítězslav Veselý, who took silver and bronze medals with them respectively. Veselý qualified at second position for Top 8 with a throw of 85.44 but couldn't better it, however, Vadlejch did with a superb throw of 86.67 metres in the final round to confirm a second place.
But, in the end it was Neeraj Chopra, who in just his second attempt ensured a Gold medal for India, first in Track and field, second overall after Abhinav Bindra's medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics in shooting.
By the virtue of this win, this is also India's best-ever Olympics as far as the medal tally is concerned as this was the seventh medal in Tokyo Olympics. India have surpassed their London 2012 medal tally of six medals following Mirabai Chanu's silver in weightlifting, Lovlina Borgohain's bronze in Boxing, PV Sindhu's bronze in Badminton women's singles, Indian men's hockey team's bronze and Ravi Kumar Dahiya's silver in wrestling.
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