Leave Chopra alone, please

Rohit Mahajan

When the end was nigh, merely 21 steps were too many for Usain Bolt — in the final of the 4x100 metres race at the 2017 World Championships, the greatest sprinter of all time fell to the ground after pulling up with a cry of pain. He lay on the track, wincing in pain, crying in sadness. Bolt at his best was the Colossus of sprinting. But the competitive life of an athlete — even one called immortal — is short. With time, the flesh weakens, bones creak, the breath shortens. Strides — Bolt’s measured 2.44 metres on average when he was at his prime — shorten, too. The ageing heart struggles to pump blood, the body takes longer to recover. Bolt was beaten by time.

Neeraj Chopra, even at the prime of his health, has known sporting mortality — he suffered a very serious elbow injury and underwent surgery at age 21. Now 23, he’s a top athlete who knows what it takes to win a global medal — he, thus, knows more than the rest of us put together exactly where he stands in his sport. Since 2000, three times the Olympics gold was won by javelin throwers with throws in excess of 90 metres. At the Tokyo Olympics, the favourite was Johannes Vetter, who has a personal best of 97.76 metres. Chopra won gold with a throw of 87.58 metres. The Panipat lad knows that many of his contemporaries have thrown the javelin farther than him. Elite athletes daily strive for improvement — something we commoners, living and wallowing in the rut, cannot fathom.

Metaphorically speaking, Chopra has scaled Mount Everest — gold at the Olympics. In terms of sporting achievement, that’s the ultimate feat; in terms of improvement in technique and distance, though, gold at Tokyo is just a very important landmark — it’s a bridge he would have loved to cross, and he did cross it at a relative young age. But there would be more such bridges along the way — the Paris Olympics in 2024 or the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 or the Brisbane Olympics in 2032 — before Chopra’s journey is done.

Chopra wants to climb Mount Everest again, at Paris three years from now. He wants to throw the javelin farther than 87.58 metres, his gold-winning mark in Tokyo, or 88.07m, his personal best. He wants to become the world champion and he wants to go past the 90-metre mark, a place only a handful of men have gone before him.

The life of a top athlete — as Usain Bolt or Johannes Vetter would vouch — is unimaginably hard. Why are we making things harder for Chopra, the only Indian athlete who can compete with the elite of global athletics? Why the controversy over his remark that his own javelin was with Pakistan’s thrower Arshad Nadeem before Chopra’s first throw in the final in Tokyo?

For those ignorant of the rules, Chopra clarified that all throwers are allowed to use a spear belonging to any thrower at these events; he appealed to ‘fans’ to not use his off-the-cuff and harmless remark for their purposes of propaganda. It’s sad that he had to make this appeal. This is one more reminder that we must keep sport and nationalism apart — easier said than done, for sport is an old tool to build self-image and use as propaganda. Perhaps we need to go out and start playing: That would make us more sporting as a people and teach us about the transience and brevity of sporting careers.

Chopra has ended his 2021 because of exhaustion due to a packed schedule — a series of felicitations and celebrations and illness have cut short his competition season. It’s not ideal for an athlete, who thrives on competition.

Roger Federer, the closest to a sporting artist we have seen in a generation, has turned 40. Two years ago, at close to 38, he was one point away from his 21st Grand Slam title. Injuries and surgeries blighted his 2020.

In Federer once existed the highest beauty of the human form: grace in movement, effortless shot-making, inventiveness others could only dream of. But time has acquainted even him with the inevitable unpleasantness of the human existence — aches and degradation of the body.

Chopra, too, hears the ticking of the clock. Let us leave him in peace and let him be the best he can be.

Also Read: Pakistan player did no wrong, asserts Neeraj Chopra