Injury healing, 2025 World Championship my next target: Neeraj

Promising to be 100 per cent fit for the new season, India’s two-time Olympic medal-winning javelin throw star Neeraj Chopra on Friday said a podium finish in the 2025 Tokyo World Championships is the next big target on his mind going forward.

The 26-year-old is back in the country after winding up his season with a second-place finish at the Diamond League finale in Brussels.

This was after he became the first Indian track-and-field athlete to claim successive Olympic medals by adding a silver in Paris to the momentous gold clinched in Tokyo.

“The season is over now. The biggest target for next year is the World Championship, and we will begin preparations for that now. The Olympics are always on our minds, but we have four years for that,” Neeraj said on the sidelines of a conference on ‘Mission Olympics 2036’ organised at the Sports University of Haryana here.

The world championship is scheduled to be held from September 13 to 21 next year. Chopra battled an adductor muscle niggle throughout the year and it also affected his performance at both the Olympics and the DL finale, where he also competed with a fractured left hand.

“It was an injury-plagued year but injury is fine now, I will be 100 per cent fit for the new season,” he asserted.

“Technical issues are also there but we will work on them. I will look to improve my technique. I do like to train in India but when competitions start, I prefer to train abroad,” he said.

Chopra has been working hard to hit the 90m mark but hasn’t managed so far despite coming close. In the Paris Olympics, his silver-winning throw was 89.45m and he was bested by Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem, who broke the Games record with a 92.97m effort.