What Neeraj Chopra showed India about winning & leading

"With hard work, we can achieve anything in any walk of life," Neeraj Chopra said with his trademark humility after winning India’s first-ever gold at the Athletics World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, on August 27. Simple, but loaded, words suggesting that winning doesn’t just entail wanting to win, but fundamentally means working to win.With both Olympic and World Championship gold under his belt, you’d think there are no worlds left for Neeraj to conquer. And, yet, he will tell you that this is just the beginning. In that sense, Neeraj Chopra represents a new breed of Indian athletes. One could argue that he represents a new breed of Indians. #NeerajChopra makes us #Proud again!! #IndianArmy congratulates Subedar Neeraj Chopra on bagging #GoldMedal &#55358;&#56647; in Men's #Javelin at World Athletics Championship 2023 in Budapest with a throw of 88.17 meters. @Neeraj_chopra1 pic.twitter.com/mV76vQetWy

— ADG PI - INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) August 27, 2023 The javelin champion is someone who has now made it a habit to go in whichever stage of competition with the mindset of winning. His ‘one-and-done’ is now a norm in qualifying rounds. And, then, in the finals, it is Neeraj who sets the benchmark, something that has never happened before in Indian track and field history.At the start of the 2023 Diamond League season in May — the league being the annual 14 elite track-and-field competitions across the world — the organisers released an advertisement featuring Neeraj: Here was an Indian athlete urging the world to come to Qatar to cheer the world’s best javelin throwers. It still seems a tad surreal.For years on end, Indian athletes had gone to the Diamond League and left within minutes, after failing to make the final. This pattern left in its wake questions the usual, jaded question about why a nation of a billion-plus could never win an athletics medal in major competitions. The story was the same at the World Championships. Indian athletes had always been the footnote, rather than the headline. They were, barring the rare exception, literally also-rans. medium103162035Neeraj: From a kid trying to shed flab to world silver, Olympic gold medium103162059At the Tokyo Olympics, Neeraj, too, came to the stadium and left early. Only, this time, he had a monstrous 86.54m throw to his name, topping the qualification charts. He was the first Indian to make the final of the men’s javelin. As Neeraj left the stadium, there was a swagger in his walk that no one could have missed. He meant business.On the day of the final, he looked composed. He wished some of his competitors the best and looked very much in ‘the zone’. And the moment he completed the first throw, the build-up began. The board flashed 87.03m. And India started to dream. When he won the Olympic gold — the first by an Indian track-and-field athlete, and the second individual win after Abhinav Bindra’s men’s 10m air rifle gold in 2008 — a lot changed.Post-Tokyo, Neeraj stood for self belief. And that inspired others to follow in his wake. Kishore Jena and D P Manu both made the javelin final in Budapest. The men’s 4×400 m relay team finished a creditable fifth. And Parul Chaudhary smashed her 3,000 m steeplechase national record while sealing qualification for the Paris Olympics in 2024. medium103162505With each competition, Neeraj has evolved as an athlete. He remains obsessed with the 90 m mark. And it could well happen next week. Or in Hangzhou, China, at the Asian Games that start next month. Or maybe at Paris 2024, as he goes in search of a second consecutive Olympic gold. But as he gets better and better, paradoxically, he has stayed the same. "Things around me may have changed, but I haven’t," he once told me.A new IndiaAnd things around Indian athletics and sports have, indeed, been changing. There is a palpable momentum in sporting India where it doesn’t feel normal any more to be an also-ran. This transition from affable but not respected as a competitor to the position of underdog contender is reflective of India’s stature geopolitically, economically. This new confidence is not based any more on the ‘hopes and prayers of a billion people’ but on a new professionalism and hard work that hones talent.But much like India’s economic progress not always being helped by its politicians, sporting progress has not always been matched outside the arenas and fields. Sports administration in India remains a farce, the scandalous wrestling imbroglio being only one prime example. The battle of petty egos and administrative malpractice have ensured that India’s wrestlers will not be allowed to compete at the upcoming World Championships.Our athletes, Neeraj included, deserve far better. Millions stayed up into the wee hours to watch him win ahistoric gold on Sunday. It was the same story when Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa lost out to Magnus Carlsen in the final of the Chess World Cup last week, and the 31-year-old HS Prannoy lost to Thailand’s Kunlavut Vitidsarn in the Badminton World Championship semifinal on August 26. India can finally consider becoming a true multi-sport nation. The antics of power-hungry administrators should not be allowed to thwart these gains.Watch: HS Prannoy beat Victor Axelsen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOxIu3V8aoU"Pressure is there, and will always be there," Neeraj likes saying. "But what is important is that sport is now attracting attention in India. People are following every single competition. They are getting to know more about javelin, and as a result, more and more people will now play the sport." On August 27, Neeraj Chopra once again showed India the way. Can Indian sport now stay on this golden path?The writer is founder, RevSportz, and co-author of Dreams of a Billion: India and the Olympic Games