When in the business of stringing words, rarely are you ‘at a loss for words’ to describe a moment or an athlete. You can’t afford it.
Athletes, on the other hand, hinge on this sentiment often to describe the improbability of their circumstances or when describing the brilliance of another athlete. It’s all quite quaint until they begin to put together words to explain what they only just announced was unexplainable.
But when DP Manu told DHoS he was at a loss for words, he truly was for the phone line went cold for a few awkward seconds before he filled the static with: “Nange nijavaglu gottila, avaralli ondu magic thara yeno ide… henge maadtaro devarige gottu.”
While the sentence in Kannada - loosely translates to ‘I genuinely don’t know, he has something like magic in him… I don’t know how he does it, only God knows’ - is telling enough, the message was actually delivered in the tone.
With ample hues of awe, humility, resignation and mostly reverence, Manu described without describing how Neeraj Chopra makes him feel.
Manu is the second-best javelin thrower in the country, and 21st in the world. In essence, the Karnataka thrower is chasing the very real ghost of the greatest track and field athlete India has ever had.
And yet, Manu humbled himself, for Neeraj operates on another plane, and every other thrower in the country knows that while they are pursuing him after being inspired by him, the Tokyo Olympics gold medallist is pursuing greatness. Nothing less.
While Neeraj has been the most consistent international track and field athlete for India since nobody, the fact that he has won pretty much everything there is to win before and since that fateful night at the Japan National Stadium on August 7, is still staggering.
One Olympic gold, one World Championship silver, a couple of Diamond League titles, and the list goes on.
So, how did a plumpy kid from Khandra in Haryana turn into the World’s No.1 javelin thrower?
“His technique has always been polished, but the thing that works in his favour is his confidence,” insists Kashinath Naik, Neeraj’s coach from his days as the World Record holder in the Under-20 World Championships.
“I have never seen such confidence in someone so young. The level of confidence I gathered towards the fag end of my career is the confidence he had when he was all of 16 or something. I met him in 2015 and by then he had that confidence. See, all the technique in the world cannot help you win medals this consistently. Obviously, fitness and training and all that is important but confidence is key.
“Not once has he looked like he doesn’t belong on the international stage. Not in one competition does he look flustered by his competitors,” he adds.
Karnataka’s Naik, who won the 2010 Commonwealth Games bronze, knows a thing or two about pushing for greatness. But he knew after his shoulder surgery in 2012 that his dreams would need to find surrogates to bloom.
Then Neeraj happened. Thereafter Manu, Rohit Yadav and Annu Rani and the rest came along.
“Another very crucial thing is that he has not changed his technique since 2016,” explains Naik. “He has built on the same technique since then. That’s very hard to do but he has managed it. Usually what happens is that you look to change your technique every few years to try and get more yardage on every throw, but he has kept the same technique and gotten stronger with it.
“When you change technique, it takes some time for muscle memory to become established and only then can you see the results. I used to train someone in the past who threw 84s and 85s, and then he changed his technique and was unable to go past the 76s for a long time.
“Neeraj, on the other hand, can throw 89s easily after just two months of training because of his basic technique and natural strength,” he notes.
Javelin is an eye-popping mix of power, strength, speed and technique. While you need a strong upper body to carry, twist and hurl the spear, the velocity comes from the legs and speed you build up on the runway.
Dr Klaus Bartonietz, Neeraj’s current coach who is in Germany with his ward to replicate conditions in Paris during the upcoming Olympics, spoke to DHoS about Neeraj’s speed in depth. “He is an amazing sprinter, and it comes naturally to him. He has these long tendons in his legs, it’s quite unique. He covers around 30m in about 3 seconds. He is really fast compared to the other athletes - even someone like Usain Bolt will have a peak speed of about 12m/s in his 100m sprint,” he says.
“I remember seeing him for the first time and thought he was ordinary because he looks so unassuming, but then I saw him run and throw and knew he could go places.”
Then there’s the strength. Most javelin throwers adopt gymnastics routines to build strength while maintaining flexibility, but a few of them can pull themselves up a rope without using their legs like Neeraj was able to do without any real training. Also, high bars and parallel bars require an unusual degree of concentration, meaning Neeraj needs to remain in the zone for extended periods of time, failing which could result in injury.
“See, when I was training, the concept of training the opposite muscle to build stability and avoid injury was not there,” says Naik. “We relied on our shoulder entirely and over time, it wore down. But Neeraj was taught to train everything in perfect sync. That’s why he rarely gets injured and even when he does, he can bounce back.”
Neeraj has had his share of injuries from the elbow surgery in 2019 to the muscle strain from a few months ago, but he still went on to win the Diamond League at Lausanne with a throw of 87.66m a couple of weeks or so ago. By his own admission, he was far from being fit and could only put in so much effort.
That a not-so-fit Neeraj can be within 2 metres of his personal best of 89.94 is nothing short of remarkable.
“I don’t think even 90m is the limist, I don’t think even 95m is the limit with someone like him. If conditions align, he can go as far as he wants,” says Klaus.
To top it off: “He’s just one of the nicest people you will ever meet,” says Naik. “He’s still down to earth and you can’t even tell that he has won so much, but when he gets on the field, something happens. It’s like he’s Superman.”
Shivpal Singh, another ace javelin thrower in the country, recalls Neeraj from a decade ago.
“He’s just a simple guy with simple routines: wake up, train, eat, train, eat, talk to parents, sleep, repeat. We used to share a room in Poland during the Olympic camp. You will not believe how easily he moves into rooms and walks out without ever seeming larger than life. No one will believe that he is the greatest track and field athlete from India. Nobody. But then he starts throwing…” says Shivpal in awe.
Here’s the thing, though India has an enormous population, according to a paper by economists Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund, huge swathes of its 1.4 billion don’t count when it comes to international athletes because of poor childhood health, physical isolation by poor transportation, and even lack of connectedness across communities.
While the problems highlighted remain at large, there is now hope, and Neeraj is the one who inspired it.