Neeraj Chopra breaks 19-year-old medal drought and wins silver at World Athletics Championships

Bringing a 19-year-long wait to an end, Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra created history by bagging an elusive medal for India at the World Athletics Championships 2022 as he clinched the silver medal.

Chopra had a slow start to the javelin throw finals and took a while to get it going under tricky conditions. Chopra threw an 88.13m in his fourth attempt to secure the silver medal for India.

In the first attempt, Chopra had fouled, before following it up with an 82.39m throw, then a 86.37m throw in the third and finally the medal-winning, history-creating 88.13m throw, before Chopra hurt his hamstring at a crucial juncture.

Meanwhile, Anderson Peters was in a great rhythm and threw three 90m and up throws and got the gold medal with a 90.54m hurl of the javelin on his final throw.

The last time an Indian athlete medalled at the prime athletics event, it was long-jumper Anju Bobby George at the 2003 Paris World Championships where George jumped a distance of 6.70m to secure India's lone medal - a bronze, from the World Championships.

Since then, it has been the longest wait for India to get their hands on another athletics medal at the World Championships.

However, Neeraj Chopra, who threw a massive 88.13m in the javelin throw finals, just in time, to secure the silver medal for India and ended the wait for India.

For the 24-year-old Haryanvi, this was his first time in the finals of javelin throw at the World Championships and given that he has been on a fantastic role,

At the Tokyo Olympics as well, Neeraj became the first Indian athlete to win an individual gold in track and field, as well.

With this feat, Neeraj Chopra is perfectly poised to head to the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and successfully defend his gold there as well.