Javelin Champion Neeraj Chopra, 23, Wins History's First Medal for Indian Athletics

Neeraj Chopra, competing in the javelin throw final this Saturday in Tokyo, in which he won gold.Matthias Schrader / AP

In the stands is Jan Zelezny, the all-powerful father of the javelin throw, and he squints as the two Czech veterans he coaches, who are fighting for the gold medal, are thrown.

The task is not easy for the Czech with the golden arm who loved exercising so much by throwing himself on the beaches of Punta Umbría, although it may seem like it to many.

The German Johannes Vetter, the man of 97.76s, the one who has come closest to Zelezny's world record (98.48m, who have been there for 25 years), does not have his day.

Neither do the other Europeans.

His boys, Vadlec and Vesely, only have one pitcher from India ahead of him, a doddle.

In all of Olympic history, India, the second most populous country on earth (approximately 1.39 billion inhabitants), has not yet achieved a medal in the athletics stadium.

It is nonsense that has generated theses and books and answers that do not answer anything, and that ended up being resolved in the Tokyo Olympic stadium, where the music of the

(

)

sounded for the first time

, the poetry of Tagore that forms the lyrics of the Indian hymn.

The celebrated one was Neeraj Chopra, 23, a talent with arm, elbow, shoulder, speed and

whip.

cricket, the national sport that the British metropolis bequeathed. Zelezny is right. It will be difficult to defeat an athlete who arrives in Tokyo as the winner of the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games and who in 2016 was already a youth world champion and who on his first throw reaches 87.03, a magnificent distance in a atmosphere so charged, in an air so thick, so humid. So good is the throw that he would not have needed to throw more, as he did (87.58s, second throw), to be proclaimed champion. None reached 87 meters. Chopra, a Punjabi from Haryana who at age 14 saw some javeliners training and was more excited about the spear than the ball that all Indian children want to throw. His talent has been honed by a German coach, Uwe Hohn, who has created a school in India.

If Chopra's idol is, of course, Zelezny, a little further north of his state of Haryana, in Pakistani Punjab, a pitcher emerged who left cricket because he wanted to be like him, a javelin thrower.

His name is Arshad Nadem, he's one year older and he's competing in the same final and he's not bad at all.

He throws 84.62m with his magnificent arm and finishes fifth.

"Quitting cricket was the best decision of my life," says Nadem of Khanewal, who as a youth was one of the best players in Punjab.

"If I wasn't a javelin thrower, I would never have been able to compete in the Olympics."

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