- Tuesday, April 23, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THREE women have already made India proud at the ongoing Tokyo Olympics by winning medals but on Wednesday (4), their male counterparts also brightened hopes to win awards at the quadrennial event enters its final phase.
Neeraj Chopra during the day became the first Indian javelin thrower to make the finals of the Games with a stunning throw of 86.85 metres in his opening attempt that catapulted him on top of the qualification round in the Japanese capital.
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The 23-year-old kept India’s medal hopes alive from athletics by making a direct entry into the finals to be held on Saturday (7) by sending the spear well past the qualifying mark of 83.50 metres in his opening effort.
A farmer’s son from Khandra village near Panipat in the North Indian state of Haryana who had taken up athletics to shed fat, Chopra left the javelin arena after his first show. This is his first appearance at the mega event.
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“I am at my first Olympic Games, and I feel very good. In warm-up my performance wasn’t so good, but then (in the qualifying round) my first throw had a good angle, and was a perfect throw,” he said. The youngster, however, is under no illusion that the final will be completely a different contest where the world’s best will fight for national pride.
“It will be a different feeling (in the finals), since it is my first time in the Olympics. Physically we (all) train hard, and are ready, but I also need to prepare mentally. I will need to focus on the throw, and try to repeat this (performance) with a higher score,” he said.
In the wrestling category, India did not have the best of starts at Tokyo but two men reignited the hopes at the Makihari Messe Hall in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Ravi Kumar Dahiya, a gold medallist at the Asian Championships, made the semi-finals of men’s freestyle 57 kilograms beating Bulgaria’s Vangelov Valentinov 14-4 via technical superiority.
World championship silver-medallist Deepak Punia also made the semi-final of the men’s 86 kilogram freestyle by defeating China’s Zushen Li 6-3. He was in a spot of bother when the score was level at 3-3 with less than a minute to go. But Deepak stuck to his job in the last 20 seconds and secured a dramatic touchdown to win the bout.
