This is a Neeraj Chopra we've never seen before. Fidgety, nervous, eyes darting everywhere. The Neeraj we're used to is calm, composed, in command of everything at all times. His confidence in his skill and his ability to affect the outcome is supreme, an intangible that is somehow palpably tangible. On Friday, there was none of that as Neeraj sat next to former Olympic champion Thomas Röhler, former World champion Julius Yego and young Indian talent Sachin Yadav on stage at a press conference ahead of the first top-grade international javelin tournament to be held in India.
You see, he's not just a competitor here, he's the organiser-in-chief of the event that bears his name: the Neeraj Chopra Classic. It's a task he takes seriously -- since landing in Bengaluru, he's juggled sponsor commitments with meeting-and-greeting each of the international competitors as they arrived with trips to the stadium to fuss over everything from the cleanliness to the length of the grass on the pitch. "I have always focused only on [competing]," he says with a laugh, "but now I must take care of everything. As an organiser, I have to think about all these small things."
He doesn't seem to mind it, though. "I like it," he says, the smile reaching his eyes. "Yesterday, I was training in the gym [at the Kanteerava stadium], and Thomas and the other throwers were training on the ground. That's when it hit me that this was what I wanted, and it's finally happening."
"It's a dream that I'd never even had before. I just always wanted to represent India and win medals... and all that had happened." It is something he's repeated for a few months now, but this is something that speaks to just why he's so nervous, so excited. "Now, there's like... peace in my mind, that something like this is happening. The medals are a different thing, it feels like I've given something back to India."
That peace he talks about appears to be a sense of fulfillment, happiness in the knowledge that he is expanding his already incredible legacy to beyond the confines of sporting achievement. No Indian has ever won a gold and a silver in an individual event at the Olympics, but now he can add to that the fact that he's single-handedly brought a gold-standard World Athletics event to India for the first ever time.
This was never an easy task, but this was made even tougher by two different big-scale changes. First, World Athletes found the floodlights at the initially decided venue of Panchkula were not strong enough, then border tensions between India and Pakistan forced a two-month postponement. At either stage, but especially the latter, it would have been easy enough for Neeraj to say let's try later, let's do it next year. But he didn't become the Neeraj Chopra by taking the easy way out.
So, he buckled down, went from high level meetings with the Haryana government to high level meetings with the Karnataka government. He ensured JSW threw their considerable heft behind this, reopened talks with his friends on the international circuit, convinced them to accept the rescheduling in an already packed international calendar.
"When my manager informed me about this event, I immediately told him. 'Yes, I have to go to India, because Chopra is my good friend,'" said a beaming Yego. For both him and Röhler -- who spoke to ESPN about expanding his footprint on a global basis, on how the sport has grown from a European-centric one to a truly world event -- competing here was never in doubt.
Röhler is happy to play a small part in the India growth story: "For me, this is like the second logical step to bring the sport to the people, not only on TV but also in person." The first was getting an Indian winning at the highest-level (which Neeraj did, of course) and the third, according to him, is setting up the coaching and the infrastructure. The Neeraj Chopra Classic, he believes then, is a step in the right direction.
A golden medal meets a golden heart. @thomasroehler meets a special young fan - a quiet reminder of what sport is truly about. ����#NeerajChopraClassic #GameOfThrows #Javelin pic.twitter.com/z4CFbRhKJs
- Neeraj Chopra Classic (@nc_classic) July 4, 2025
For Neeraj, it's simple: he wants India to get to the kind of level that he sees week-in, week-out when he competes across the world. "This is the start of international competitions in India. Like how we see in Germany, competitions of different categories happen almost every week. That's what I hope for India -- that we atleast have 4-6 world class competitions [in the country, every year] so that [domestic] athletes get the opportunity, international athletes come here, people can watch them compete."
He glanced to his left and patted Sachin Yadav on the knee as he said this. Even if only two years his junior, Sachin and the other three Indians participating in the event (Yashvir Singh, Sahil Silwal, Rohit Yadav) are much below Neeraj in the global pecking order. This is their first chance to throw with athletes of the calibre of Röhler and Yego. Neeraj's hope is that this is just the first of many, that the new gen of track and field athletes gets to see up close, even compete with, the best in the world right at home.
For once, then, it's not where he finishes that matters. "The biggest thing is that we must make this event a success, says Neeraj. "For performance, of course, we all have to throw well. But even more important is that we should make this event successful so that we can develop it and go bigger in the future."
So, when he starts his run up at the Kanteerava on Saturday evening, it's that legacy he'll be chasing. He will want to win, of course he will, but he will want more. It won't just be the 90m mark in the distance that he will be thinking of as he sprints in, it'll be all of everything. And as the javelin arcs into the grey Bengaluru sky, his hope is that it will land right in the middle of India's sporting heart.