The farm boy who picked up a spear—and became an Olympic hero to 1.4 bn people

He is the farm boy who became a national hero to the world’s most populous country by picking up a sport that no one else took seriously. He is the strapping Olympian who competes with his flowing dark hair tied back in a black bandanna. And he is the man who secured a breakthrough gold for India by launching a javelin the length of a football field.

That medal was just the start. The shower of real prizes began when Chopra returned home in 2021 as his country’s first ever track-and-field Olympic champion and found some 30,000 people in his village waiting to greet him in an open car. India’s defense minister gave him a stadium. India’s largest airline gave him a year’s worth of free tickets. India’s first individual gold medalist gave him a Golden Retriever named Tokyo.

His ability to hurl a spear has turned Chopra into a genuine celebrity and given him the sort of fame normally reserved for cricketers and Bollywood idols.

But javelin has given track and field’s most famous athlete much more than some airline perks, millions of Instagram followers and a puppy. It has provided this 26-year-old from rural northern India with his life’s meaning.

“Without javelin," Chopra says, “I feel like I’m incomplete."

Chopra now has a chance to bring home India’s first gold medal of the Paris Games. To defend his title, the reigning world champion will have to survive competition from Germany, Czech Republic, Grenada—and Pakistan. Even as he battled injuries before the Olympics, he came to France confident that he would be leaving with another shiny souvenir.

“People’s opinions are, ‘OK, maybe Neeraj will not throw so good,’" Chopra said in an interview before the Games. “I will be ready."

He was certainly ready for qualifying this week, when his throw of 89.34 meters was his best of the season and the longest of the field, a reminder to his competition that Chopra is still the man to beat on Thursday night.

The odds of this happening to a kid from a tiny village in a country that never cared about javelin were slimmer than a billion to one.

Chopra grew up in the northern state of Haryana, tending to buffaloes and milking cows. “Like a normal farm boy," he says.

But he was also a chubby farm boy. Hoping to get their husky teen in better shape, Chopra’s parents took him to a local sports club. By then, Chopra had played all the typical sports for boys in India, like cricket and kabaddi and more cricket. “I didn’t know about javelin at that time—and also my family didn’t know," he says. “Just a random thing."

But he was drawn to the athletes in one corner of the stadium seeing how far they could throw stuff. When he picked up a javelin for the first time in 2011, he wasn’t exactly dreaming of the Olympics. “I didn’t know what I was doing," he said. As he messed around and took advice from everyone around him, he got better.

A lot better.

Within five years, Chopra broke the world junior record with a throw of 86.48 meters, or 283.7 feet, which is like flinging the javelin from home plate to the warning track in Fenway Park. At the 2016 Olympics the following month, that distance would have been good enough for a bronze medal.

Though he hardly knew where to begin with a massive lance, Chopra quickly learned that javelin combined plenty of the sports that he already loved. He needed to work on speed for the run-up, agility for the crow hops he takes as he rears back to throw and pure leg strength to plant his front foot and launch his missile.

“We also train like sprinters, we also train like jumpers, and also like throwers," he says.

He does that training outside of the public eye under the watchful supervision of his physiotherapist Ishaan Marwaha and German coach Klaus Bartonietz. With his close-knit team, Chopra skips around the globe, to wherever the javelin takes him, while his managers handle the growing business of being Neeraj Chopra from Bengaluru.

When he’s not throwing a javelin, he’s obsessively watching others do it. Chopra grew up studying videos of Czech javelin legend Jan Zelezny, a three-time gold medalist who holds the world record to this day. Now that he’s an Olympic champion himself, Chopra is constantly grinding tape, searching for an edge—and a few extra centimeters.

“There is nobody who’s more of a student at his event than Neeraj," said Kara Winger, a four-time Olympian in javelin for Team USA.

Before Chopra, India had won a total of nine gold medals—and none in any sport other than shooting and field hockey. At the last Summer Olympics, India brought home the same number of medals as Azerbaijan. At this one, India is tied on the medal table with Tajikistan.

Its ultimate goal is to host the 2036 Olympics. In the meantime, India is becoming a force in a sport that doesn’t involve guns or hockey sticks.

Chopra’s success has lifted a generation of javelin throwers. Three years ago, he was the first Indian man ever to make the Olympic javelin finals. By last year’s world championships, India had three of the top-six finishers. Of course, Chopra won.

There have been good javelin throwers and even great ones. There haven’t been many famous ones. With his 9.2 million Instagram followers, Chopra has the largest following of any track-and-field athlete.

Just like the javelin, celebrity didn’t come naturally to him. And just like the javelin, Chopra makes it look effortless.

“I am not that friendly with the camera," he says. “But now I’m used to it."

—Georgi Kantchev contributed to this article.

Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com and Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com