Neeraj Chopra wins Paris Diamond League title with one big early throw, feels there is still room to improve

When it all comes together, it is bound to be glorious, but as such, it was another fruitful international outing for India’s foremost track and field athlete as he clinched his first Diamond League meet win of the season.

BOOM 💥 Neeraj Chopra with a 88.16m throw in his first attempt!

Big statement here at the Paris Diamond League from the champion himself in just his first throw.🔥

📺VC: Wanda DL#ParisDL #NeerajChopra #CraftingVictories 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/NrbLmq6729

— Inspire Institute of Sport (@IIS_Vijayanagar) June 20, 2025

At a packed Stade Charléty, not far from Stade de France where he won silver in Paris last year and later spoke about the desire to find those big throws consistently, Neeraj’s first throw perhaps indicated he was in the groove. The arms went up, like they usually do after he knows he has made a good throw, but not for long. An 88+ is no mean feat on any given day, but Neeraj is now targeting 90m+ consistently, so perhaps he tempered his own expectations quickly. He didn’t get close to it for the rest of the event, uncharacteristically fouling three of his six attempts. Weber, meanwhile, registered 81m+ with all his six throws, but even his best mark came with the first attempt of the event at 87.88m.

Neeraj elaborated that the problem he faced was at the time of release, where he felt he was falling over to the left. “It is a matter of timing because I feel really good during the run-up, but the timing was not so good when I threw. I went quickly left and it was not good. I need to throw to the front, like with the chest and go up with the javelin, but I go too much left. We are working on it,” he said, gesturing to the chesty release he’d like to execute.

“I need some more control when I throw, like on the attack. Still, there are so many things we have to change and I need maybe a strong core and a stronger body for throwing,” he added with a chuckle.

The surprise package of the night was Brazil’s Luiz Mauricio da Silva, who broke his own South American record once more with a monster 86.62m throw that came off his third attempt. But the rest of the field struggled to get past 82m, with two-time world champion Anderson Peters continuing to have a lukewarm start to the season with a best throw of 80.29m and finishing fifth, below Keshorn Walcott.

Neeraj insisted that there is work to be done ahead of his main target of the year – the World Championships in Tokyo. “I will compete in Ostrava after four days on 24 June, so I need some quick recovery. I am very excited for the NC Classic (July 5 in Bengaluru), I feel it’s really something that I did for my country. For the rest of the season, I’m hoping for some more 90m throws because I broke that barrier in Doha, so now I believe I can do some farther throws. But let’s see, it all depends on weather conditions, how the body feels, and all that. The main target is the Tokyo World Championships.”