India's Hangzhou Asian Games silver medallist Kishore Kumar Jena has been ruled out of the inaugural edition of the Neeraj Chopra Classic, a men's javelin exhibition event, due to an ankle injury five days before the competition in Bengaluru. Yash Vir Singh, who beat Jena at the Indian Open Athletics for the title in Chennai earlier in April this year, has a personal best of 82.57m and is currently ranked 41st in men's javelin throw.
Yash Vir will be part of the five-man Indian contingent headlined by Neeraj Chopra himself, featuring the likes of Sachin Yadav, Sahil Silwal and Rohit Yadav. The five Indian athletes will be competing against seven of the best international athletes including the two-time world champion Anderson Peters of Grenada, Kenya's Julius Yego, Genki Dean of Japan, American javelin thrower Curtis Thompson, Luiz Mauricio Da Silva from Brazil, Germany's Thomas Rohler and Rumesh Pathirage of Sri Lanka, an emerging South Asian athlete.
Touted to be one-of-a-kind homegrown international javelin competition in India, NC Classic is a collaboration between JSW Sports, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI), World Athletics (WA) and obviously Neeraj Chopra, as the name suggests.
Several of the athletes are fresh from the Doha and Paris Diamond League legs and will be raring to go at the NC Classic, with a couple of more DLs and the final to look forward to in August.
Originally scheduled to take place on May 24, the NC Classic was rescheduled due to the security concerns following the India-Pakistan conflict in early May. Chopra had also sent an invitation to the Olympic Gold medallist, Arshad Nadeem, who declined as he was preparing for the Asian Athletics Championship in Korea, where he eventually won the top bill as well.
