Guwahati: India’s long and agonising wait for a first Olympic athletics gold medal was ended by Neeraj Chopra at the Tokyo Games. Chopra won the javelin title with a personal-best throw of 87.58 meters.
The 23-year-old has been showered by rewards since the day he arrived in India, and now, as per the Defence PRO official release, a stadium inside Pune’s Army Sports Institute is likely to be named after Olympic Neeraj Chopra.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will visit Pune’s Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) and Army Sports Institute (ASI) on August 23 and is likely to name a facility for Neeraj Chopra, officials said on Friday.
During his visit to Army Sports Institute, the Union Defence Minister is likely to name the stadium in the campus as ‘Neeraj Chopra Army Sports Institute, Pune Cantonment’, an official release from the Defence PRO said.
According to the release, Rajnath Singh will felicitate 16 Olympians from the Services during his visit to ASI, apart from addressing troops and sportsmen training at the premier facility.
At DIAT, Singh will chair the institute’s general body meeting and interact with MTech and PhD students apart from inaugurating a new building in the campus.
Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra was given a rousing welcome as he arrived home in India on Monday after winning the men’s javelin event in Tokyo and securing the country’s first-ever athletics gold.
Apart from Chopra’s gold, India won two silver medals and four bronze medals at the Tokyo Olympics. The silver medals came from weightlifter Mirabai Chanu and wrestler Ravi Kumar Dahiya. The bronze medals were won by shuttler PV Sindhu, the men’s hockey team, boxer Lovlina Borgohain and wrestler Bajrang Punia.
Chopra is the second Indian to win an individual gold medal at the Olympics after sport shooter Abhinav Bindra won gold at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
