India’s star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra, who is fresh off winning gold in the NC Classic earlier this month, said that he has identified a problem in his game and will be looking to address it at the earliest.
“I have already identified the areas I need to work on. While throwing the spear I tend to fall too much on my left side. We need to work on that. In training I don’t do that, but in competition, it happens because of the extra effort I put in,” Chopra said.
“I have achieved 90m this year. But I need to be more consistent to achieve it more often. I am continuously around 88-89m, and my coach said he is happy, but I need to be more consistent,” Chopra said during the launch of Under Armour store.
The Olympian will be training in Prague and Nymburk in the Czech Republic for 57 days as he prepares for the world championships, set to take place on September 13-21 showpiece in Tokyo.
“My next target is the world championships and I want to win there. Before the world championships, I will plan with my coach and see which event I can compete to best prepare for it,” Chopra said.
Last week in the NC Classic, Chopra took the lead with the 2nd attempt, then retook the lead with his third throw to thrill the Bengaluru crowd. After a foul throw to start, Neeraj went up to 82.99 and then 86.18m, and the latter was enough to hand him the title in front of nearly 15,000 who attended the event. Kenya’s Julius Yego finished 2nd with Sri Lanka’s Rumesh Pathirage coming in third.
Speaking after winning the title, Chopra insisted that he wasn’t happy with the distance but said he was satisfied considering the windy conditions. “I was expecting a good result but the wind of quite heavy and I am happy to win. It was mentally quite tough for me as I knew people expected me to win. I had come here after participating in two events and hence I was under pressure to perform in front of the home crowd,” he added.
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