Neeraj Chopra: ‘I had to throw 7 times for gold medal’: Did China try to ‘throw’ Neeraj Chopra out? | Asian Games 2023 News

NEW DELHI: India’s golden boy Neeraj Chopra successfully defended his Asian Games gold in javelin throw with a season’s best throw of 88.88m in his fourth attempt but the Chinese officials appeared to have thwarted his chances and targeted the Indian athletes once again.
A lot of chaos was seen among the officials after Chopra’s first effort and everyone kept waiting for the result. But he was asked to take his attempt again as his first throw was not recorded due to a malfunction in electronic distance measurement.

Neeraj also spoke about the issue after his title, saying this was the first time he had to go for seven throws.
“I normally throw 6 throws in a competition. Today I had to throw 7. I have never seen anything like this before. There was something wrong. They did not measure my throw and by the time the next guy threw and they lost my mark. The first throw looked good, I’ll look at the video again to see how far it might have gone,” he said.

Jyothi Yarraji was also victim of the foul play by Chinese officials in the 100m hurdles final and Neeraj reckons there’s no point debating with them.
“Things like this have happened with some of the other athletes as well here, which is not right. Even Jena’s second throw was wrongly called foul. But I thought no point debating it. Had to respect other athletes as well, as their bodies were getting cold because of the delay,” Neeraj added.

It was a historic 1-2 finish for India in javelin final with Kishore Kumar Jena bagging silver with his personal-best mark by covering the distance of 87.54m.
Jena’s second throw was wrongly called foul but he is happy to have achieved his target.
“I have never seen anything like this (throw controversy) before but my target was to be among the medals and qualify for the Olympics, which I achieved,” he said.
AFI vice president and legendary long jumper Anju Bobby George also accused Asian Games officials of ‘cheating’ and ‘targeting Indians’.
“They are trying to cheat us, targeting Indian athletes. Like today with Neeraj, they did not measure Annu (Rani’s) first throw yesterday. It was also a very good throw. Jyothi Yarraji also faced this (in 100m hurdles),” she said.
“We still won gold and silver (in men’s javelin). But we are going to lodge a protest (complaint) against the officials,” Anju added.