Olympics 2024 Athletics: Neeraj Chopra throws 89.34m, qualifies for final

Reigning world champion Neeraj Chopra made it look effortless and threw 89.34m in his first throw to qualify for the final of the Javelin Throw event at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Tuesday.

Placed in the second qualification group of the Javelin Throw qualification, Neeraj came up good in the very first throw and registered his season best breaching the automatic qualification mark of 84m.

Currently, at the top of the qualification table, Neeraj is most likely to finish at number one after qualification is done.

Another Indian in the fray, Kishore Kumar Jena had a disappointing outing in the qualification round.

Placed in the first qualification group, Kishore finished ninth in his group with a best throw of 80.73m. Out of the three throws, he fouled once and registered two throws just above 80m.

From the group A, four athletes qualified directly with Julian Weber of Germany coming first with a throw of 87.76m. Julius Yego of Kenya finished second with a throw of 85.97m and Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Jakub Vadljech finished third with a throw of 85.63m.

The final athlete to directly qualify from Group A was Toni Keranen with a throw of 85.27m.

From the second group, Anderson Peters of Grenada and Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan earned the direct qualification by throwing 88.63m and 86.59m.

Neeraj will play his final on 8th August.