A game of throws: Neeraj Chopra and his javelin are heading back into the field

The king? When you are the first and only person to win an athletics gold for India at the Olympics, there’s little that qualifies as hyperbole.

The return? Neeraj Chopra had to shoulder the burden of being history-maker when he returned triumphant from Tokyo last year, spending months in a whirlwind of felicitations that left no time for training, even as track and field stars from other countries went back into competition.

Chopra had to escape his own fame. With coach Klaus Bartonietz, the German biomechanist who is considered the world’s leading expert in throws, he cloistered himself first at the Chula Vista Olympic training centre in California earlier this year, then in Turkey, then at the Kuortane Olympic Training Center in Finland.

Here, where the sun sets after midnight and rises again at 4 am at this time of year, by the waters of an icy lake, Chopra will mark the summer solstice by competing at the Paavo Nurmi Games.

Chopra, aged 24, will be up against World No. 1 and close friend Johannes Vetter, 29 (whose personal best, 97.76m, is the second-best throw ever recorded), reigning world champion Anderson Peters, 24 (who improved his PB from 87.31 to an eye-popping 93.07 at the Diamond League in Doha last month), and Czech Jakub Vadlejch, 31 (the silver-medallist from Tokyo is the only other person to breach the 90m mark this year, throwing 90.88 at the same competition in Doha).

Which raises the question: Has Chopra, whose personal best is 88.07 and whose stated goal after his Tokyo gold was to cross 90m, hit that mark in training?

Reading between the lines of a long and fascinating conversation with Bartonietz on the science of the javelin throw (featured in this week’s Secrets of Sports Science podcast on HTsmartcast.com), it seems like he has. “The magic number,” Bartonietz said, “well, he has hit the release velocity for it already.”

“It’s not about as hard as you can (throw), but as smart as you can,” Bartonietz added. “It’s not about the tallest or the strongest, it’s about how coordinated you are, ja, about harnessing your muscles, tendons and ligaments in the optimal possible way. The best at the moment, Vetter, has it all — he is big, he is strong, but he can also harness that in a coordinated manner.”

Chopra is relatively smaller and lither. But his biomechanical coordination is a marvel. Bartonietz puts him through a lot of gymnastics training. “He thrives,” Bartonietz said. “He has what we call movement intelligence: he knows how to be aware of his body, how it works, and he can be creative with it.”

What about his strength training? It features some overhead pressing, squats, a lot of bodyweight work, and a combination of Olympic lifts such as the snatch (where the weight is lifted from floor to overhead in a single motion) and the clean and jerk (lift to shoulder height, hold momentarily, thrust overhead).

Throwing the javelin is extremely taxing, especially on the joints. The load on the front leg when the athlete sprints and brakes can be up to ten times the thrower’s bodyweight. For those interested in such things, Chopra’s personal best at the snatch is 100kg; his best squat is 200kg. Which is not to say he couldn’t lift more, as Bartonietz pointed out.

“Elite athletes are highly motivated. You tell them to show their best, they will push till they rupture a muscle,” the coach added. “So in training, we work with a certain reserve.”

Some of that reserve will be shed when Chopra takes the field for the first time since Tokyo, lining up in his rightful place in a league of the world’s best.