Mumbai: The Indian star athlete Neeraj Chopra made his practice perfect as he hauled the javelin to a distance of 83.18m for the gold medal at the Lison event on Thursday.
The Olympic-bound Chopra said that he will take his performance up a notch in the upcoming international meets.
The 23-year-old made a promising start to his Olympic preparations with a decent 83.18m which he achieved in his sixth and final throw in the Lisbon event on Thursday. It was his first competition in more than a year.
"We knew beforehand who are competing in this event in Lisbon and my coach told me to compete in training mode and not to go 100 per cent," Chopra said.
"I had very less time for the competition (in Lisbon) and it was taken like a training case. In the next events, competition will be tougher and I will give more effort," Chopra added.
Interestingly, Chopra's scoresheet initially showed 78.15m in his final effort which would have meant that he won the event with his first throw of 80.71m.
But his team management requested the organisers for a manual measurement of the final throw and it came out to be 83.18m.
"Neeraj's team there lodged a review of the final throw and a manual measurement was done," said Manisha Malhotra, JSW Sports' Head of Sports Excellence.
Chopra is being accompanied by coach and biomechanical expert Klaus Bartonietz and physio Issan Marwaha.
He will compete in Karlstad Meet in Sweden on June 22 and in the Kuortane Games in Finland on June 26.
He will stay in Lisbon till June 19. After that he will train at Uppsala in Sweden.
