Neeraj Yadav, Three-Time Asian Para Games Gold Medallist, Dies at 42

Neeraj Yadav, one of India's most successful para-athletes and a three-time Asian Para Games gold medallist, has died at the age of 42. He was found dead at his flat on Tuesday night, and India's chief para-athletics coach, S. Satyanarayana, confirmed to the IANS news agency on Wednesday that Yadav had died by suicide.

"Yes, Neeraj has died by suicide at his flat. This is extremely unfortunate and tragic. The cause behind the extreme step is yet to be ascertained," Satyanarayana told IANS. The Times of India reported the same confirmation from the coach, who said he had been told that Yadav had taken poison at his flat on Tuesday night. Reports of that detail are unconfirmed, and the circumstances of the death have not been established. A postmortem examination was under way at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital in Delhi on Wednesday, and Paralympic champion Sumit Antil and fellow para-athlete Vipin Kasana were at the hospital, sources told the Times of India.

A career built from a late start

Yadav was born on February 10, 1984, and came from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. He was diagnosed with polio at the age of seven and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He played wheelchair tennis for about seven years before taking up athletics in 2015, at the age of 31.

The rise was fast. At the 2015 Delhi State Athletics Meet he won gold medals in the shot put, javelin and discus, and in 2016 he took silver medals in the men's shot put and discus in the F55 class at the Fazza Grand Prix. The F55 class is for seated field athletes.

Three Asian Para Games gold medals

His biggest results came at the Asian Para Games. At Jakarta in 2018 he won the men's F55 javelin title with an Asian record throw of 29.84 metres. In September 2022 he won gold at the Marrakech Para Athletics Grand Prix in Morocco with a new Indian national record.

At the Hangzhou Asian Para Games, held in October 2023, he won two more gold medals. He took the discus title in the F54, F55 and F56 combined class on October 24, 2023, and added the men's F55 javelin gold four days later, which gave him three Asian Para Games titles in his career.

The doping case that ended his career

An out-of-competition sample collected in Bengaluru in October 2023 tested positive for stanozolol, a banned anabolic steroid, and the National Anti-Doping Agency provisionally suspended him. Yadav sought DNA testing of his sample through the anti-doping disciplinary process, the Times of India reported. MyKhel reported that his two Hangzhou gold medals were later stripped following the case and that he was denied the government cash reward tied to them.

The suspension had not ended when the Asian Para Games were held at Aichi-Nagoya in Japan earlier this month, so he could not compete. Satyanarayana told reporters it was possible the missed Games had affected Yadav deeply, while stressing that no one could say for certain what he had been going through.

Yadav was married in 2018. His death was announced as Indian para-athletics was still marking a record medal haul at the Aichi-Nagoya Games, where India won 114 medals in total.