Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra has dislodged the enduring Usain Bolt because the “most visible” athlete on the earth after successful a historic gold medal within the Tokyo Games, claimed a World Athletics examine.
The 24-year-old Indian additional enhanced his famous person standing by successful a silver on the world championships.
Chopra led a star-studded area when it comes to media protection with 812 articles revealed in his identify, adopted by Jamaican dash trio of Elaine Thompson-Herah (751), Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce (698) and Shericka Jackson (679).
The charismatic Bolt, additionally a Jamaican, was within the fifth spot with 574 articles in his identify, based on the statistics launched by World Athletics throughout President Sebastian Coe’s year-end interplay with a choose group of Asian journalists, together with from PTI.
The knowledge was supplied by Germany-based media monitoring agency Unicepta.
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This is the primary time that Bolt, who retired in 2017 and who nonetheless holds the world report in 100m and 200m, has not led the listing.
“I am not being dismissive of Usain Bolt. He is an icon of our sport. But this (Chopra leading the list) shows we are broadening our horizon, we are now not talking about only one athlete, we have many,” Coe stated.
Chopra continued his meteoric rise this 12 months after his Tokyo Olympics gold, successful silver on the earth championships in Eugene, USA, after which grew to become the primary Indian to win the Diamond League closing title.
Chopra’s success has put Indian athletics on the worldwide stage, however the nation can be within the prime bracket of manufacturing dope offenders with a number of prime performers, together with the likes of Olympians Kamalpreet Kaur, Shivpal Singh and MR Poovamma testing optimistic for banned medicine just lately.
Asked if his organisation is anxious of this sort of improvement, Coe stated World Athletics remained “vigilant” relating to international locations like India not as “infringers” however on the premise of manufacturing a lot of elite athletes.
“We are vigilant notably round international locations which have lots of elite degree athletes and India falls in that bracket. Countries like Ethiopia, United Kingdom, USA, Germany, all these international locations have large contingents of elite athletes and subsequently identifies not vital as culprits or infringers however it does establish the extent of danger merely primarily based on the variety of elite athletes.
“I know the Indian federation is very keen to do everything it possibly can alongside every other federation out there to minimise the chance of athletes of falling foul of performance enhancing drugs.”
The 66-year-old Coe, himself a double Olympic gold medallist in 1500m, stated 2022 was a rare 12 months in world athletics — when it comes to athlete efficiency, competitions and monetary side.
“The complete affect of internet hosting our 4 World Championships got here to USD 316m (USD 237m of this was the affect of the World Championships in Oregon), based on Nielsen examine, measuring the affect of our signature occasions throughout 5 key indicators – financial, social (as in volunteering, participation, legacy and so on), media, environmental and attendance.
“Four World Athletics Series Events the place nearly 4,000 athletes competed from 180 international locations, 261 National Records set and we reached a cumulative world TV viewers of over 1 billion.
“Full season of Diamond League events and 162 Continental Tour events around the world where over 13,000 athletes competed from 159 countries…. Across both these one-day leagues 9 Area Records and 173 National Records were set.” He stated the variety of private greatest recorded all through the season throughout the 180,000 elite athletes tracked was over 400,000.
“This compares to 269,000 in 2021, 183,000 in 2020 and 308,000 in 2019.”
