Sumit Antil pushes himself to break Championship record en-route third Para Worlds title

Three-time world champion Sumit Antil. That's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

As he walked into the men's F64 javelin at the New Delhi World Para Athletics Championships on Tuesday, the two-time Paralympic champion knew that he could win a third Worlds gold even if he wasn't at his best (the differences in personal bests between him and the rest was too vast)... but there's something greater that drives Sumit on. So, he stepped up, nursing a painful shoulder, and hurled his way to a new Championship record (CR) of 71.37m, bettering his own previous mark en-route becoming the most successful Indian in para worlds history.

Watched on by two great figures in Indian javelin -- Neeraj Chopra (former Olympic and World champ) and Devendra Jhajharia (two-time Paralympic, one-time Para World champ) -- and a crowd that danced and screamed every time he got to the top of his runup, Sumit pushed himself, despite the obvious lack of competition and plainly apparent discomfort in the shoulder. The result was the CR, a throw that had the sparse (but loud) crowd at the Delhi Jawaharlal Nehru on their feet.

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At times, it appeared his coaching staff had been asking him to take it easy with the injury, but he didn't seem to care about that at all. Speaking to ESPN at the end of the event, Sumit admitted that he was disappointed he couldn't set a new world record [his current stands at 73.29m]. "It's been two years since I've been throwing [in the range of] 71m, 72m, 73m so now I'm getting angry seeing those marks," he said. "I wanted to hit 74m-75m today and should have if all had been well."

This is not what you'd expect an athlete who's just won a major gold to say, but that's the kind of drive that has made Sumit who he is. This is what makes everyone flock to him, from fans to athletes... in this world, he's the celebrities' celebrity. Today, like it's been for some time, it was Sumit vs Sumit from the outset. His first throw of 65.59m was 17.21m farther than anyone else managed at any point in the competition, so in effect he could have just walked out there. But, of course, he chose to hunt the 74m-75m mark.

"It's very difficult when there's a lack of competition," he said. "Waking up and motivating yourself every day, dragging this tired body to the ground daily... it's tough. But the aim is that I want to hit my targets. After all, I only set those, no one else told me to hit 75m or 80m, so I keep trying... I've set it myself; I should achieve it by myself."

That ambition, though, meant battling his own body on Tuesday. Copious amounts of painkiller spray had to be applied as Sumit pushed himself. "I was facing a lot of difficulty in my throws," he said. "It's not an old injury, just the day before when I woke up, I felt stiffness in my neck, wasn't able to turn it. Today, one of my warmup throws had gone 68-69m and I got a lot of pain then; it was shooting up to my neck. I tried to manage it with spray etc. so that I could win this competition..."

The roar he let out after that throw was only outdone by the racket whipped by the crowd when they saw how far it had gone. For there is a popularity to javelin that's infectious, driven by champions like Sumit and Neeraj, and it appears to have the whole nation in a bind.

"I'm very happy how athletics is getting such love from the country. I feel that if kids come and see us, they'll also get inspired," he said when asked about how his and Neeraj's pursuit for glory had ignited a love for the sport across the nation. "In my childhood I used to wrestle, and Yogeshwar [Dutt] ji had come to my school once and I'd decided then itself that I will also win an Olympic medal, go someplace as a Chief Guest like him... so you never know when and where a child might get inspired. The hope is that we can inspire the young generation."

It's not just the medals and titles that should inspire, though, it's the champion will. The kind that makes you say "theek-thaak [about alright]" when asked to describe in a couple of words how you feel about a performance that lands you your third World title.

Sumit Antil, three-time world champion. Theek-thaak, eh?