New Delhi: There’s a long-running joke between Neeraj Chopra and his German coach Klaus Bartonietz. During the previous Olympic cycle, shortly after they had started travelling together, Neeraj would often implore Klaus to “adopt” him. “Neeraj would say, ‘Coach, you stay in a beautiful village, you have a wonderful life.
Why don’t you adopt me?’ And the coach would just laugh,” recalls Ishaan Marwaha, Neeraj’s physiotherapist. After Neeraj’s Tokyo gold, Klaus turned the tables on his ward. “Now, the coach tells him, ‘You are a rich man now.
Why don’t you adopt me?’ It’s been so many years but the joke still cracks them up,” Ishaan adds. In many ways, this sums up the relationship between the reigning Olympic champion and his coach. It’s not one of dutiful reverence or dispassionate coexistence.
Despite half a century separating them in age, they find common ground to connect and still have enough room for gentle ribbing and leg-pulling. “There’s no generation gap. We listen to each other, that’s the secret of our relationship,” the 76-year-old says.
Their lives intersected at NIS Patiala in late 2019 when Klaus, at Neeraj’s behest, was appointed his coach. It was barely a year after Klaus was roped in by the Athletics Federation of India as an assistant to the then javelin coach Uwe Hohn. Hohn guided Neeraj to gold medals at the Commonwealth and Asian Games in 2018, but his insistence on heavy training left Neeraj cagey.
“Hohn’s.