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Kim Sharma and Leander Paes had a delightful evening with Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra on Thursday, September 9, 2021.
Sharing a picture on her Instagram profile, actress-model Kim paid tribute to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics gold medal-winning champion.
'Thank you for the pride you've brought to our country. And @leanderpaes for starting it all up #1996,' Kim wrote.
Leander won an Olympic Bronze medal at the Atlanta Games in 1996, beating Fernando Meligeni in the play-off match and is the only Indian to win an Olympic medal in the tennis competition.
His Bronze medal was the only medal India won at the Atlanta Games and India's first individual Olympic medal in 44 years -- since wrestler Khasbha Jadhav won a Bronze medal at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
Neeraj scripted history in the 2021 Olympics, winning the men's Javelin event, ending India's 125-year wait for an elusive medal in athletics.
The 23-year-old son of a farmer from Khandra village, near Panipat in Haryana, who took up athletics to shed flab, gave the country that elusive medal which slipped from the grasp of the likes of Milkha Singh and P T Usha in the 1964 and 1984 Games, with a scintillating showing in the final.