Who is Sachin Yadav? All you need to know about javelin thrower who broke National Games record

With a meet record in javelin throw, Sachin Yadav had a dream outing at the National Games 2025 in Dehradun. With a throw of 84.39 meters in his fifth attempt, the athlete from Uttar Pradesh went past Rajendra Singh’s 82.23 meters. Yadav continued his impressive run of form as he recorded throws of over 80 meters in five competitions on the trot.

Rohit Yadav, who also hails from Uttar Pradesh, fell agonizingly short after throwing 80.47 meters. Uttarkhand’s Vikas Sharma bagged the bronze medal with a best throw of 79.33 meters.

Hailing from Uttar Pradesh’s Khekra village, Sachin started his career in javelin when his neighbor Sandeep Yadav spotted him during a local cricket match. Sandeep, who was an athlete himself, said that Sachin had strong shoulders, which is needed to be successful in javelin.

Under Sandeep, Sachin started training at the age of 19, and from there on, he didn’t look back. In 2021, he faced a bump in his career after fracturing his throwing elbow two times. Just when he was on the cusp of giving up the sport, his family encouraged him to continue.

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"I am close to my goal" - Sachin Yadav

With his decent showing in the National Games, Yadav breached the criterion of 75.36 meters to qualify for the Asian Athletics Championship in 2025. But he fell short of the 8.50-meter mark needed to secure a berth in the World Athletics Champions to be held later this year.

But Sachin sounded confident and said that he was well on his way to achieving his dreams.

“My goal was to achieve the World Athletics automatic qualification mark but I missed. I’m close to my goal and should be able to achieve 85.50m in the next competition,” Yadav said in a post-event interview, as per Olympics.com.

In javelin, India have had Neeraj Chopra and Kishore Jena, both of whom took part in the Paris Olympics. Neeraj won gold in the Tokyo Olympics and followed it up with a silver in Paris.