With a throw of 88.16m in Tokyo, Japan yesterday, Keshorn Walcott catapulted himself and T&T back into the global athletics spotlight and opened yet another door for young aspirants. It has been 13 long years since his stunning Olympic gold medal throw when he was but a teenager. At 32, the champion bettered his 2012 number by 3.58m.
Mr Walcott’s journey through those intervening years was difficult. After his Tokyo victory he told international news agency, Reuters, about his love-hate relationship with the javelin. “It’s painful, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s like the most toxic relationship ever. It just keeps pulling you back.”
In blustery conditions, he had the two longest throws of the evening, defeating a field of world-class opponents, including his fellow Caribbean competitor, Grenada’s Anderson Peters, a two-time World champion, who finished second with a throw of 87.38m. The line-up also included other Olympic and World champions Neeraj Chopra, Arshad Nadeem and Julian Weber.
Mr Walcott had never won a World Championship medal in spite of his gold and bronze (Rio 2016) Olympic medals, Commonwealth Games silver (Glasgow 2014), gold (2015) and silver (2019) at the Pan American Games, gold in the Continental Cup (Marrakech 2014) and gold in the Junior World Championships (Barcelona 2012). This year it again looked like he would miss out. He barely scraped through the qualifying round and on Wednesday produced 83.93m to finish fifth in Group A, outside the automatic qualifying mark of 84.50m. He had to wait for Group B to finish before securing a spot in the 12-man final where the comeback kid produced something special.
With this victory, Mr Walcott has underscored his staying power in a sport that is highly competitive with many rising stars, and confirmed his resilience, perseverance and discipline to maintain his physical and mental form. He has also, importantly, further pushed open the door of yet another sport for young T&T dreamers.
While Mr Walcott launched his season’s best throw to take us back to the future, as Reuters said, Jereem “the Dream” Richards set a new national record of 43.72s with his silver-medal-winning 400m run, also in Tokyo. Mr Richards had medalled at world level before—bronze in the 200m and gold indoors. However, this major outdoor 400m medal at the World Championships adds to his career achievements and T&T’s pride.
T&T has a rich history in sprints and relays but individual medals in the 400m outdoors at world level are rare. Mr Richards’ silver helps cement this country’s status not just in short sprints but also in the one-lap event and further raises the profile of the 400m domestically.
The Herculean efforts of both Mr Walcott and Mr Richards demonstrate to younger T&T athletes the rewards of persistence, self-belief and discipline. At a time in our young nation’s development when there are starkly contrasting portraits of youth lifestyles, these achievements matter even more. We thank them for their example and the joy they have brought to a nation.
