NEW DELHI: India’s Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra will not defend his Commonwealth Games javelin title in Birmingham due to injury, the country’s Olympic association said on Tuesday, two days ahead of the opening ceremony.

Chopra, 24, picked up the injury during the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, where he won silver at the weekend.

The Indian Olympic Association did not say what the injury was but after coming second behind Grenada’s Anderson Peters he complained about “discomfort” in his thigh.

Chopra was the reigning champion at the Commonwealth Games, which start on Thursday.

“Chopra had called me earlier today from the US to convey his inability to take part in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games owing to fitness concerns,” Indian Olympic Association secretary general Rajeev Mehta said in a statement. “[He] had an MRI scan done on Monday and, based on it, he has been advised a month’s rest by his medical team.”

Chopra made history for his country when he won the javelin at last summer’s Tokyo Games, becoming India’s first Olympic athletics gold medallist.

Chopra, who hails from the northern Indian state of Haryana, won the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games gold in 2018 and had been chosen as India’s flag-bearer for Thursday’s opening ceremony of the July 28-Aug. 8 Commonwealth Games.

“Neeraj has said that since he is not 100 percent fit to compete at the Commonwealth Games, he would not be the flag-bearer of the Indian contingent at the athletes’ parade in the opening ceremony,” Athletics Federation of India president Adille Sumariwalla said in a statement.

Chopra had been in top form this season until the injury struck. He broke his own national record at the Diamond League in Stockholm in June as he registered a personal best throw of 89.94m.

India, the Commonwealth’s most populous country, is not generally known as a sporting powerhouse — except for cricket — but it has regularly performed well at the Games.

Its athletes came third in the medals table behind hosts Australia, and England, at the Gold Coast and were in the top five at the previous four.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2022