With the nation along with the sport’s world celebrating the birthday of a star javelin thrower, Neeraj Chopra became the top-searched personality in Google’s year-end list for India in 2021. Neeraj Chopra is the first-ever Indian athlete to win gold in track and field at the Tokyo Olympics 2020. His second-round throw registered 87.85m in the men’s javelin throw final.
Neeraj is the second athlete from India to bag the gold medal in an individual event at the Olympics after Abhinav Brinda’s shooting gold in 2008. Neeraj became a famous personality overnight and had to attend several events after his return to India. Besides, he was also featured in advertisements and top magazine covers.
Apart from him, three other athletes made it to the top-10 personalities on Google’s list this year. Take a look:
PV Sindhu
Sindhu is the first Indian woman to bag two individual medals at Olympics. The badminton player performed commendably at Rio Olympics 2016 where she won a historic silver medal. Again, in Tokyo Olympics 2020 she won a bronze medal by defeating China’s He Bing Jiao in 21-13, 21-15. The Hyderabad-born shuttler in the 2016 Rio Olympics made it to the final where she lost against Spain’s Carolina Marin.
Bajrang Punia
Punia is considered one of India’s top men wrestlers. In Tokyo Olympics 2020, Punia won bronze after defeating Daulet Niyazbekov of Kazakhstan in the men’s freestyle 65kg category. Besides, Punia is the only wrestler to have won three medals in the World Wrestling Championships.
Sushil Kumar
Sushil is India’s first athlete to win two Olympics medals in wrestling. However, the 38-year-old wrestler was in the news for the wrong reason. On May 23, the wrestler was arrested and has been lodged in jail since June 2, 2021, for being the prime accused of murdering a young wrestler. Sushil along with others allegedly assaulted former junior national wrestling champion Sagar Dhankar and his friends at the stadium in May over a property dispute. Dhankar succumbed to his injuries and as per the post mortem report, Dhankar died due to “cerebral damage resulting from blunt object impact.”
