For the men's javelin throw event, 32 athletes were eligible to qualify for the event with a maximum of three athletes per nation. The qualification could be secured either by achieving the entry standard of 85.50 m in the qualification period is between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024 or by the World Athletics Ranking for the event.[5] A total of 11 athletes qualified by achieving the qualification standard and a further 21 athletes were granted entries based on their individual rankings.[6]
The qualification was held on 6 August, starting at 10:10 (UTC+2) for Group A and 11:35 (UTC+2) for Group B with 32 athletes participating.[4][6] As per the qualification rules, athletes achieving the qualifying standard of 84 m (Q) directly qualified for the final with other spots being filled by the best performers (q) for a field of 12 athletes.[7]
In the qualifying rounds, nine athletes including Chopra, Nadeem, Peters, Silva Vadlejch and Weber qualified for the final directly after achieving the qualification standard. Dehning did not make it out of the qualifying round. Silva improved on his own South American record in qualifying.[7][8]
The final was held on 8 August, starting at 20:30 (UTC+2) in the evening.[4] In the finals, Peters registered the first throw of above 84 metres with a 84.7 m effort, which was bettered only by Walcott with a 86.16 m attempt. In the second round of attempts, Vadlejch threw 84.52 m and rose to third in the classification, before Peters took the lead with a 87.87 m throw. Nadeem registered a huge 92.97 m throw in his second attempt to set a new Olympic Record and moved into first place.[9] Weber threw 87.33 m and moved into third place, which was soon taken over by Yego with an improved throw of 87.72 m.[10]
Two more throws later, Chopra registered a 89.45 m throw on his first valid attempt and moved into the silver medal position in the overall classification.[11][12] Vadlejch started the third series of attempts with a 88.50 m throw, which moved him into third place again. But Peters took it off him later with a 88.54 m throw in his fourth attempt. Chopra fouled out on his remaining throws and no one else registered a legal throw beyond 89 m. Though Nadeem's gold was confirmed after Chopra's last fouled attempt, he registered another long throw of 91.79 m in his final attempt to close the proceedings.[13][10]