After Olympic gold, Neeraj Chopra jumps 14 places to 2nd in world rankings

New Delhi, August 12

India’s Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra gained a whopping 14 places to occupy the second spot in the men’s javelin throw world rankings after his historic gold in the Tokyo Games.

The 23-year-old Chopra, who sent the spear to 87.58m to clinch India’s maiden Olympics athletics medal on Saturday, was at a lowly 16 before the Tokyo Games with an average performance score of 1224.

But in the latest rankings issued by World Athletics, Chopra found himself at the second spot with 1315 average performance score behind German Johannes Vetter (1396), who finished a lowly ninth in the Olympics final after coming into the Games as the gold medal contender.

Chopra collected 1296 performance points for topping the Olympic qualification round on August 4 and 1559 points for winning the gold in the final. Three other events of this year—Federation Cup, Indian Grand Prix-3 and Kuortane Games (Finland) — where he had come up with big throws were also considered in the ranking process.

Vetter, however, remained on top of the world rankings despite failing to make it to the last eight in the Olympic finals as he was dominating before the Tokyo Games with seven 90m plus throws this year.

Marcin Krukowski of Poland, who also had failed to make it to the Olympics final despite having the season’s second-best throw of 89.55m, was third in the latest world rankings with an average performance score of 1302.

Tokyo Olympics silver winner Jakub Vadlejch of Czech Republic was fourth with a score of 1298.

Showpiece events like the Olympics and World Championships carry more points than others in the calculation of world ranking points.

World rankings are normally issued on Wednesday or at the end of major events. PTI