Unprecedented feat awaits: Neeraj Chopra and Murali Sreeshankar can fetch two top-three finishes at Diamond League

In a not-so-common occurrence two Indian athletes will line up within minutes of each other to compete in a Diamond League at Lausanne a little past midnight on Friday night.
In-form long jumper Murali Sreeshankar will be the first to go, followed Olympic javelin throw gold medal Neeraj Chopra a few minutes later. Two top-three finishes at the same Diamond League event is not ruled out because of the class of the two young but experienced Indian athletes. Such a feat will be the first for the country and will bode well with the World Championships in August and the Asian Games a month later.
Friday night will mark Chopra’s return to competition after a month’s injury layoff because of a muscle strain. Twenty-four-year-old Chopra’s only competition this season was the Diamond League in Doha. He was first with an impressive throw of 88.67 metres, a strong start to the season. However, he missed the FBK Games in Hengelo in Netherlands on June 4 and the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland, 10 days later because of the injury. Yet, Chopra didn’t miss out on Diamond League points because the events at Rabat, Florence, Paris and Oslo didn’t have the men’s javelin throw. Chopra is leading the race to the Diamond League Finals with eight points, thanks to his first place finish in Doha.
Like Sreeshankar, Chopra will also be up against a quality field at the Diamond League, a series of competitions around the world which culminates with the Final in Zurich.
Chopra, the reigning Diamond League Champion, will have the Czech Republic’s Jakub Vadlejch breathing down his neck. Vadlejch, the Olympic silver medall, took the world lead from Chopra throwing 89.51 metres at the Paavo Nurmi Games. Vadlejch is second on the Diamond League points table — 7 points to Chopra’s 8 — and will be the biggest challenger to the Indian star at Lausanne.
Vadlejch was in discomfort after nearly twing his ankle at Turku and skipped his last two throws but it was reportedly nothing but an injury scare. Since the Paavo Nurmi Games, Vadlejch threw 86.83 metres at the Kuortane Games and 81.93 metres at the Ostrava Golden Spike on Tuesday.
Also in the fray is Grenada’s two-time World Champion Anderson Peters. The 25-year-old has had a middling season with a best of 85.88 metres at the Doha Diamond League. Peters made news for not only defending his world title last year but also for an off-field incident involving a brawl on a boat. But like he has shown in the past, Peters can produce a big throw out of the blue and even in the latter rounds of a competition when other throwers tire. His personal best of 93.07 metres is the best among the group of throwers set to line up at Laussane.
Germany’s Julian Weber is still not in the league of a Johannes Vetter — the 90-plus metre phenom who hasn’t been the same thrower he used to be since failing to qualify for the finals of the Tokyo Olympics — but the 28-year-old is capable of pushing the best though he does not have a major medal outside the European Championships.
However, Chopra will remain the favourite. The Indian has not finished outside the top three in a competition in nearly four years.
Sreeshankar will be appearing in his second Diamond League of the season. He finished third in Paris with a jump of 8.09 metres well below what he is capable of. But more than the dance in Paris, it was more about him ticking the box of a top-three finish at the Diamond League. Sreeshankar had to miss the Oslo Diamond League because he travelled for the Inter-state Championship in Bhubaneshwar, the selection trial for the Asian Games and Asian Championships.
He is fourth on the Diamond League points table with six points.
However, the trip to Odisha was worth his while because he produced 8.41 metres in the qualifying round, just a centimetre short of the national record of Jeswin Aldrin.
Sreeshankar, the Commonwealth Games silver medal, has also started putting in a string of consent jumps. In five of his six competitions this year, he has produced 8-metre plus jumps. In 9 of his 14 competitions last year, he jumped more than 8 metres, three of them over 8.20 metres. He will be up against Olympic Champion Greece’s Miltiadis Tentoglou and World Championship bronze medal Switzerland’s Simon Ehammer. If Sreeshankar hits his stride, another top-three finish in a Diamond League competition is within his grasp. Just like it is for Chopra.