Mondo Duplantis, the double pole vault Olympic champion, praised ace Indian javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra being the same person despite his success at the Olympics.
The Swede knows Chopra from his 2016 World Junior Championships days.
“We have interacted quite a bit actually and also being able to interact with him before the Olympics in Tokyo and after the Olympics too… He was still the same guy, same nice, caring guy as I met years back,” Duplantis told PTI.
“We were at the same competition, maybe the first time in like 2016 World Junior Championships, he also exploded on the scene there. He’s a huge, huge inspiration,” the enigmatic Swede gushed.
“I love what he does, he’s a really talented and great athlete and what he’s also doing just for sports in India is a really, really amazing thing,” Duplantis added.
Chopra had clinched a gold medal in the World U20 Championships 2016 in Poland with a youth world record-setting throw. In that event, Duplantis bagged a bronze in the boys’ pole vault event from Bydgoszcz.
Duplantis is still to visit India but wants to visit the nation as a competitor.
“The best thing would be to just compete in India and be able to show the Indian people what I can do and the most entertaining thing I do is definitely jump, not just talking… I would love to come, and jump and experience the culture, that’s a big time bucket list,” Duplantis concluded.
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