The men's javelin throw event at the 2020 Summer Olympics took place on 4 and 7 August 2021 at the Japan National Stadium.

2019 World Champion Anderson Peters was also here, but the top thrower since the last Olympics was 2017 World Champion Johannes Vetter, who had the seven best throws of the year and an outlandish 97.76m in the COVID shortened 2020 season, which placed him #2 in history.

Andrian Mardare improved his position with 82.84m then Veselý threw 85.44m to take over second place and pushing everyone else down.

Vetter came up in 7th place off of his first round 82.58m and remained there after he threw barely over 75m and deliberately fouled.

8th place Arshad Nadeem came up and improved his mark to 84.62m, he had earlier made history by becoming the first ever Pakistani athlete to qualify for a track and field final at the Olympics.

The sixth round ended in a whimper as each of the contenders tried to get their best throw to challenge Chopra only to foul or have a below average result.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the period was suspended from 6 April 2020 to 30 November 2020, with the end date extended to 29 June 2021.

The world rankings period start date was also changed from 1 May 2019 to 30 June 2020; athletes who had met the qualifying standard during that time were still qualified, but those using world rankings would not be able to count performances during that time.

The qualifying time standards could be obtained in various meets during the given period that have the approval of the IAAF.