After making a mistake that required him to redo his first throw at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, Neeraj Chopra was able to keep his gold medal. The event occurred as a result of the referees failing to measure his throw before to the subsequent thrower throwing his javelin.
Neeraj originally objected to the strange situation, but then conceded to try again. It appeared as though the javelin had passed the 85-meter threshold. His reworked initial try came in at 82.38 meters. In the end, Neeraj’s fourth throw of 88.88 meters sealed the victory.
With a throw of 87.54 meters, India’s Kishore Kumar Jena also overcame an incorrectly issued red flag to win the silver medal. During the tournament, he twice surpassed his personal best and qualified for the Olympics in Paris.
Neeraj claimed he was equally perplexed by having to toss seven times rather than six after taking home the gold.
“I protested first. But the other athletes were waiting for me to throw again. I was apologising to them for making them wait. It was breezy and other athletes were cooling down. It was getting unfair on them. So they offered me a re-throw and I accepted.”
He added: “The first throw looked good, I’ll look at the video again to see how far it might have gone. It’s surprising, they didn’t measure it. I am still puzzled, apparently the second athlete threw before they could even measure my throw and they lost the mark then.”
It’s the first time something like this has happened with me in a competition this big. It happened with Jyothi (Yarraji in the 100m women’s hurdles), Jena and me. So there’s something wrong. But still, we have shown how hard we’ve worked and won medals. I haven’t seen anything like this in a big tournament. Athletes can get mentally down, even Jyothi was affected.” Neeraj said. (H/T – Indian Express)
