India’s star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra has described missing the Asian Games because of injury as difficult but said the biggest lesson for an athlete is to “accept” the setback and focus on making a comeback.The 28-year-old was set to chase a third straight Asian Games gold medal before suffering a ligament injury during training. The injury came soon after Chopra threw a season-best 88.05m at the Lausanne Diamond League, bringing his 2026 season to an early end and ruling him out of both the Asian Games and the Diamond League Final.Speaking on the Khelo Bharat Podcast of the Sports Authority of India (SAI), Chopra admitted the setback was hard to deal with.“It is definitely difficult. I wouldn’t say it is easy,” he said, as quoted by PTI.“It has become a little normal for me because this has happened quite a few times in my career. There have been times when I was very well prepared and suddenly suffered an injury.”“Even after winning many things, you still feel that if you had been able to use that time without the injury, perhaps even better things could have happened.”Chopra said the latest injury was even more frustrating because he had finally started feeling like himself again after recovering from an earlier setback.“When I felt that I was finally back to being the old Neeraj again, with the same enthusiasm and consistency, I threw 88 metres. Then, just a day later, I got injured again during training. The first few minutes were very difficult for me. I couldn’t process what was happening,” he said.The two-time Olympic medallist said he had spent the entire year focusing on training and competitions.“I pushed myself so much, mentally and physically. I had started training right from the beginning of the year. I hadn’t really spent any time with my family. I had focused completely on training and competitions because it was a very busy year.“I kept thinking that after doing so much, I had ended up back at the same place where I was at the beginning of the year.”Rather than ignoring the disappointment, Chopra said he allowed himself to go through it before shifting his focus to recovery.“I felt bad, and I allowed myself to go through that process. I didn’t fight with myself and say, ‘Forget it, it’s okay.’ I felt really bad initially.”“But I think the best thing for an athlete when an injury happens is to accept it as quickly as possible. So that’s what I did. I thought, ‘It has happened. Now let’s work on how to make a comeback.'”Chopra said the timing of the injury was unfortunate because several major competitions were coming up, but he has now turned his attention to next season.“The timing was unfortunate because I had some very important competitions coming up. But then I thought, maybe this was meant to happen. It has happened, so now let’s focus on the competitions coming next year.”Chopra won India’s first Olympic gold medal in athletics at the Tokyo Olympics and followed it up with a silver medal at the Paris Olympics.
