Neeraj Chopra

Chopra, who decimated all the competition in Tokyo to win gold with a throw of 87.58 metres on Saturday, is ranked second at 1395 points behind Johannes Vetter of Germany. Vetter, the top-ranked German with 1396 points, failed spectacularly in the final at Tokyo and finished ninth. Po'and's Marcin Krukowski is third with 1302 points while Jakub Vadlejch of the Czech Republic, is fourth with 1298 points.

From the moment Chopra landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on August 9, people started clicking pictures of the ace thrower's javelin at the arrival lounge, neatly packed in a black bag with "Neeraj Chopra" written prominently on it. The best 'calculation' though was done by someone who tweeted a sketch of a pencil shaped like a javelin and drew a gold medal, captioning it "History".

Following Chopra's success at the quadrennial showpiece on the penultimate day, the official Olympics handle's (@Olympics) video celebrating the thrower's iconic win was the most watched Olympics video on Twitter in India. The 23-year-old Chopra's tweet expressing gratitude for the country folk's support for his gold-winning Olympics journey was also the most liked and re-tweeted tweet.

With over 2.5 million Instagram followers, India's new gold medalist's defining appearance has always been his long hair. The athlete stated during the ceremony on Monday that that now that the Olympics are over, he will explore growing out his hair again. Chopra explained that his long hair caused him issues during training, so he opted to cut it short for his match.