Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra has surpassed legendary Usain Bolt as the ‘most visible athlete’ after his historic gold medal win at the Tokyo Games, according to a study by World Athletics. India’s 24-year-old star player then added to his glory by winning a silver medal at the World Championships. As far as media coverage is concerned, 812 articles were published on Chopra. They are followed by the Jamaican trio of Elaine Thompson-Herrah (751), Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce (698) and Sherika Jackson (679). The charismatic Bolt is at the fifth position in this list with 574 articles.
The figures were released by World Athletics President Sebastian Coe during an interaction with select Asian journalists, including PTI. These figures were provided by Unicepta, a Germany-based media monitoring firm. Ko said, “I am not ruling out Usain Bolt. He is an icon of our sport. But this (Chopra leading the list) shows that we are expanding our horizons. We are not talking about just one athlete anymore. We have a lot of such athletes.
