India’s ace athlete Neeraj Chopra has pulled out of the Paavo Nurmi Games 2023, which are slated for 13 June in Finland. Paavo Nurmi Games is a Finnish athletics meet held annually in Turku since 1957. The competition is a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold event. Neeraj Chopra had won a silver medal at the Finland meet last year with what was then a national record throw of 89.30m.
Neeraj also missed the end of the 2022 season due to an injury. Neeraj had announced last month that he would skip the FBK Games in the Netherlands due to a muscle strain he sustained during training last month.
The javelin ace was out of major competitions for almost eight months due to an injury after winning the Diamond League 2022 finals in Eugene in September last year. After returning from the injury, Neeraj made a winning comeback at the Doha Diamond League on May 5 this year, finishing first with a throw of 88.67m at the Qatar Sports Club.
Along with the FBK Games and Paavo Nurmi Games, the 25-year-old athlete will also skip the National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships in 2023. His next scheduled tournament is at the Golden Spike Ostrava in the Czech Republic on 27 June.
He is also expected to feature in the World Athletics Championships in August and the Asian Games in September. Besides Neeraj Chopra, former world champion Johannes Vetter of Germany has also decided to pull out of the meet. The two rivals, who last squared off at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, were expected to renew their rivalry at the Finnish meet.