Who would want to be Neeraj Chopra?

Why read this story?

Editor's note: He was around 13 years old when he picked up a javelin on a whim and achieved a 40+ metre throw straight out of the box. He was 18 when he became the first Indian athlete to set a world record, at the 2016 U-20 world championships. He fought his way back from a back injury, then a groin injury, then a 2019 surgery to treat a bone spur in his right elbow; he struggled against the restrictions of the pandemic to prep for Tokyo, and he ended up as the first Indian athlete to win gold in Olympic track and field.  The story of the accidental Olympian—his father reportedly enrolled him in a gym to mitigate his childhood obesity—is rich with drama and incident, with questions that cut to the heart of what sport is all about. What was that trigger, that moment when something clicked in his mind and he knew that this was the sport he wanted to excel in, to the exclusion of all else? What did it take for a young lad with an untutored, …