Athletics: Neeraj Chopra contemplates surgery to fix recurring injury after season ends

As Neeraj Chopra stood on the podium at the Stade de France, he finally let out a smile. This was a day after he stood poker faced with the Indian tricolour wrapped around his back and posed alongside fellow medallists Arshad Nadeem and Anderson Peters.

Chopra was on the podium for a second consecutive Olympic Games. But, he had failed to defend his title from Tokyo. In Paris, he was the silver medallist behind Pakistan’s Nadeem, who broke the men’s javelin throw Olympic record.

“Gold toh gold hain, gold is gold,” Chopra said in a media interaction felicitated by JSW on Saturday. “You cannot compare any medal with the other. It depends on where and under what situations, you have won.

“The kind of situation that I was in, how my journey has been in the last couple of years and the amount of throwing sessions I had, I am happy with whatever I got and how I performed.”

Also read: Neeraj Chopra continues to build on his great sporting legacy in Paris

The situation is something Chopra would keep on referring to time and again in the 40-minute long conversation. The Indian athlete and his team were faced with a situation out of their control – his groin injury.

Chopra first picked up a groin strain in May 2023 between his season-opening Doha Diamond League Meet and the Lausanne Diamond League meet.

“Before my groin flared up, I had some good training sessions – both technically and distance wise,” said Chopra. “I was mentally in a good space, but then the injury happened all of a sudden.”

The thought of surgery had been put into consideration at the time but Chopra opted against it. The 26-year-old from Haryana may, however, get the procedure done once he ends his season after the Diamond League Final in September.

He met up with doctors in Doha, who suggested immediate surgery, but with the World Athletics Championships scheduled in August 2023, he decided to power through. The World Championships gold was the only major achievement missing in his cabinet back then.

Chopra played through the pain and ended up being crowned the world champion in Budapest. He even went on to defend his Asian Games title in Hanghzou a month later.

“The doctors in Doha had suggested surgery just months before the World Championships,” said Chopra. “In my mind I knew World Championships gold is the only thing left to achieve and my training was going well.

“The decision was right [of not undergoing surgery then] because I would have missed the entire year with World Championships and we did not know how much I could recover before the Olympics. Even in the off season after the Asian Games, there was not much time for a surgery and be ready for the Paris Olympics.”

The reigning world champion started off his 2024 season well at the Doha Diamond League, but had to pull out of a few events ahead of the Olympics as the injury resurfaced. As per doctors, the situation was such that the injury could be managed for the most part, but posed the risk of flaring up at any random time, leaving Chopra in immense pain.

Though his injury did not flare up during the Paris Olympics, Chopra revealed that it did play on his mind during the event.

“It [the injury] was a big setback,” stressed Chopra. “We could not really predict when it would flare up and my mind was focused throughout on ensuring that I keep my groin safe. I think we maintained it well until now and we will take a decision [on surgery] after the end of the season.”

The injury meant that Chopra could not get enough throwing sessions in training under his belt before the Olympics. This is something even coach Klaus Bartonietz too identified as a problem area for Chopra in their Olympics post-mortem.

“If I am throwing less in training, there is lesser focus on technique,” said Chopra. “The improvement needed in technique did not happen because of it.

“It will take some time to get this back on track, but I am confident once we do it, I’ll be able to throw better distance.”

The conditions at the Stade de France in Paris also seemingly played against Chopra. The fast track installed in the athletics stadium – the fastest ever used in Olympic history – meant that the Indian struggled to maintain his pace on the runway. Chopra attributed his uncanny spike in foul throws to this particular feature of the track.

He was also under pressure in the competition with Nadeem throwing a massive 92.97m in his second attempt to take the lead. Chopra responded almost immediately with his only legal throw in the final minutes later, but could not touch the elusive 90m mark.

“I was mentally ready,” said Chopra. “I never felt I could not do it. I was ready mentally, but physically I was stopping myself.

“My legwork on the runway was not good. I was trying to put all my strength behind the throw to compensate for it, but it was not happening. I pushed myself a lot mentally but as far as the legwork, technique doesn’t fall in place all efforts go to waste.”

The legwork issue, for Chopra, also comes down to his injury. The groin is where most of the body weight leans into as a javelin thrower starts his cross step before a throw. The javelin when released from his hands, Chopra explained, was also curling to the inside a bit, instead of travelling in a straight line.

Chopra maintained that the Paris Olympics was one of the better competitions from the standpoint of his groin. Despite a full blown effort where he threw his second and third best career throws – 89.34m in the qualification and 89.45m in the final – the injury did not flare up.

In fact just a couple of days after the Paris Games, Chopra was back to full-fledged training sessions in Switzerland, where he’ll compete in the 2024 Lausanne Diamond League meet later this month. He might also compete at the Zurich Diamond League in September, before capping off his season with the Diamond League Finals in Brussels on September 13-14.

After all of it for Chopra, might be the delayed but inevitable surgery.