The Olympic champion joined DP Manu and Kishore Jena in the men’s javelin final at the Athletics World Championships on Friday as Neeraj Chopra automatically qualified with his season-best throw of 88.77m.
Chopra won the Qualification Group A after tossing the spear on his first try to his fourth-best distance of the season and career. The talented Indian surpassed the 85.50m Olympic qualification mark for 2024 Paris.
Manu, a 23-year-old who this year took home the silver from the Asian Athletics Championships, was sixth overall across both groups and made it into the final with his best leap of 81.31 metres.
With an 80.55m throw and a ninth-place finish in Group B, another Indian, Kishore, qualified for the 12-man final. His first throw, an enthusiastic 80.55 metres, was followed by throws of 78.07 metres and 77.12 metres, which was his lowest distance of the day.
Czech Republican Jakub Vadlejch, who started the second set of qualifiers, led the chart in the first try with an 81.34-meter throw but later, on the second attempt, he launched a magnificent 83.50-meter throw and qualified right behind Chopra.
Arshad Nadeem, a Commonwealth Games champion from Pakistan, won the second-best throw of the day—86.79 meters—to win a direct qualification to the final. He was the third athlete after Chopra and Valdejch to reach the qualifying mark.
Nadeem’s throw allowed him to surpass the 85.50 qualifying standard for the Paris Olympics. Track and field athletes began to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics on July 1, 2023.
Surprisingly, Anderson Peters of Grenada, the defending champion, missed out on a spot in the final after placing 16th out of a field of 36. His longest throw was 78.49 metres.
-IANS
