Neeraj Chopra: The Greatest Indian Olympian

The outcome of the men's javelin throw event on Thursday night at the Olympic games in Paris felt like a 'bitter loss' despite India winning a silver medal.

Neeraj Chopra had to make way for Pakistan's Arshad Nadeem.

For the 'golden boy' who raised the level of Indian athletics to global standards and continues to do so, a silver medal seemed to be a little underwhelming.

The result was an anticlimax of sorts but a silver medal - India's best at the Paris Olympics 2024 - is no mean feat.

Neeraj is now just the second Indian man since independence to win two Olympic medals.

That said, celebrations amongst fans back home were muted, perhaps owning to the fact that an athlete from Pakistan had won gold.

The 90m zone remains uncharted territory for Neeraj. On a day when he struggled to stay behind the fault line - five of his six throws were deemed fouls - Neeraj still managed a medal-winning throw of 89.45m on his second attempt.

For Indian fans, accustomed to seeing Neeraj dominate the javelin event since his Tokyo Olympics triumph, his second-place finish might have felt underwhelming.

However, the silver medal underscores Neeraj's remarkable consistency on the global stage and solidifies his place among the sport's legends. And when the dust settles, the magnitude of Neeraj's feats will be felt even more profoundly than ever.

In sports, not every occasion is meant to be sweet.

There are struggles and heartbreaks too, but to finish on the podium on a day his body and mind were not in sync showed Neeraj's unwavering tenacity to stay in the medal hunt even when the chips were down. And this is unprecedented in Indian sports.

At Paris, many of India's medal contenders fell by the wayside and there were several heartbreaks - on six occasions, Indian athletes found themselves inches short of the podium with fourth-place finishes.

But Neeraj is a ray of hope who refuses to fade away.

Despite his bodily pain, he did not fumble and delivered a solitary throw that mattered the most.

His podium finishes have triggered a change in thinking and now, anything less than a medal is not worthy of celebration. This marks a transition from the past, when fourth-place finishes were revered by the Indians, like the ones secured by Milkha Singh in 1960 and PT Usha in 1984.

"The way you carried the hopes of a billion hearts, your unwavering spirit shining brightly, fills us all with immense pride," Abhinav Bindra, the Beijing Olympics gold medalist, would say to sum up Neeraj's feat.

"Winning silver, you have shown us that the pursuit of greatness is a relentless journey, one filled with passion, dedication, and belief," Bindra added.

In the pages of Indian sports history, Neeraj's Paris Olympics silver will stand tall among his medals because of his unwavering ability to fight through the odds on a difficult day.

Winning a gold in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and now a silver three years later, Neeraj has come a long way and is now India's most internationally recognised athlete.

In a country where winning an Olympic medal is a rarity and inconsistency is rampant, Neeraj's uncanny ability to win has propelled him as the tallest hero of the nation.

At 26, he won almost everything that the world has to offer to an athlete - a gold and silver medal in the Olympics, a Diamond League League Final feather, a World Championships and two Asian Games gold.

No Indian athlete comes close to him.

Despite his overflowing medal cabinet, Neeraj shows no sign of slowing down. And he vows to recover from injuries and compete again with absolute mental and physical readiness.

"I want to see the national anthem being played again," Neeraj remarked on Thursday night.

Indian fans could be disappointed with the silver, but Neeraj remains the gold standard and the greatest Indian sportsperson.