Mumbai

The one huge change that Neeraj Chopra's maiden Olympics gold medal in athletics at Tokyo 2020 brought about is that athletes now dare to dream and more importantly are confident of winning them.

The metamorphosis in Indian athletics came about because Chopra's gold medal in men's javelin throw, the first by an Indian athlete at the Olympics, now inspires other athletes to start dreaming big.

Indian athletes will take this new-found confidence into the Paris Olympic Games, hoping to continue to build on the legacy of Chopra's first gold and add more medals as they chase the dream of making the country of 1.4 billion a force to reckon with in the athletics world.

Considering that Indian athletes have won only one gold, barring the two silver medals bagged by Englishman Norman Pritchard in 1900 in Paris and attributed to India, in more than 100 years of participation in the Olympics, many people are bound to dismiss the desire to dominate track and field events at the top level as a pipe dream.

However, many believers in Indian athletics like Adille Sumariwalla, think that India have made big strides in athletics since Tokyo and nowhere it was put on glorious display an at the World Championship 2023 in Budapest when three Indians figured in the top 10 of the men's javelin throw. It is also evident in the fact that for the first time, the athletics squad is the largest in the Indian Contingent.

Sumariwalla says even if the Indians fail to win any medal in the Paris Olympics, they will show visible and appreciable improvement in their performances. In all 29 athletes will be representing the country in Paris Olympic Games, the most-ever in the quadrennial Games.

And leading India's charge in Paris will be Neeraj Chopra, who will be the favourite to win his second medal in the Olympics, and hopefully the gold medal again. Since the Tokyo Olympics, Chopra has won silver and gold medals in the World Championships, gold in the Diamond League Final in 2023, and gold in the Asian Games in Hangzhou.

The 26-year-old Chopra has also struggled with injuries that have delayed his progress, making him wait for the big day when he would cross the 90m mark. In 2022, Chopra achieved his personal best of 89.94 at Stockholm and in October 2023, threw his best of the season of 88.88 metres at Hangzhou, China. He has reached Paris after recovering from a niggle and has participated in only the Paavo Nurmi Games 2024 at Turku, Finland, winning gold with a modest throw of 85.97m.

Apart from Chopra, India will have high hopes for Kishore Kumar Jena in the men's javelin throw. The athlete from Odisha has won a silver medal in Hangzhou behind Chopra with a personal best of 87.54m.

Avinash Sable, the national record holder in men's 3000m steeplechase, is another athlete from whom the country has high hopes along with shot putter Tajinderpal Singh Toor, the Asian record holder, and the men's 4x400m relay team, which had given the United States a run for its money in heats at the World Relays 2024 in Bahamas.

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India is also expecting good performance from the race walkers as four of them -- two each in men's and women's sections -- have qualified both in men's and women's sections.