Neeraj Chopra vs Arshad Nadeem clash fizzles out; Sachin Yadav records personal best

Neeraj Chopra finished eighth, with a best throw of 84.03m at World Championships 2025 (Source: X)

Four years ago, Neeraj Chopra went to the Olympics in Tokyo as a relative unknown outside Asia. On Thursday evening, he returned to the Japan National Stadium as defending world champion, who had also won Olympic silver in Paris (2024) to follow that unforgettable Tokyo gold. But on a night when the form book was torn to shreds, Neeraj finished a disappointing eighth, with a best throw of 84.03m. India’s best performer was Sachin Yadav, who threw a personal best of 86.27m in the first round to finish fourth.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Keshorn Walcott – Olympic gold medallist at 19 in London (2012) – was the shock winner, hurling the javelin 88.16m in the fourth round after an 87.83m throw in the second had put him top of the pile. Grenada’s Anderson Peters – bidding to join Jan Zelezny, Neeraj’s current coach, as a three-time World Championship gold medallist – took silver with 87.38m. Walcott had never previously finished on the podium at the World Championships.

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The pre-event hype had centred on Neeraj and the man who beat him in last year’s Olympic final, Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem. But Nadeem, who has had an injury-plagued season, fared even worse, finishing tenth with a best throw of 82.75m. Neeraj started with a throw of 83.65m, and improved that by 38cm in the second round. But that was as good as it got. But the time he fouled his fifth throw, the frustration was writ large on his face. It had been well over half a decade since he missed out on making a final-round throw.

Sachin, who won silver in the Asian Athletics Championships earlier this year, put together a superb sequence of throws, with two more over 85m, but he couldn’t quite bridge the gap to the USA’s Curtis Thompson, whose first-round fling of 86.67m was enough to claim the bronze.

Perhaps an even bigger shock that Neeraj not winning a medal was Germany’s Julian Weber finishing fifth. Having dominated the track-and-field season and thrown 91.51m in Zurich, Weber was a red-hot favourite. But once again, he failed on the big stage, with a best effort of 86.11m only good enough for fifth.

After this setback, Neeraj’s attention will shift to the Asian Games next year, though the long-term goal remains Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. If Walcott’s gold at the age of 32 showed anything, it was that Neeraj has much more to look forward to.