Keshorn Walcott
Trinidad and Tobago, athletics
clive brunskill/getty images
T
he Keshorn Walcott story is an amazing one. Walcott was fifteen when he first tried his hand at the javelin. Mere months later, he was in St Lucia representing Trinidad and Tobago at the Carifta Games, an annual meet featuring the best youth athletes in the region. The Toco teen struck gold in the boys’ under-17 javelin. Walcott’s overnight success was a clear indicator that he was born to throw. Three straight Carifta Games under-20 titles between 2010 and 2012 meant that Walcott left the junior ranks with an unbeaten record at the regional championships. But while his Carifta career was stellar and he celebrated with a record throw of 77.59 metres in his swansong performance in Bermuda, there were far more significant achievements to come in 2012. Walcott travelled to El Salvador, where he retained his Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Junior Championship title with an impressive 82.83-metre effort — a new meet record. Then came the IAAF World Junior Championship title in Barcelona, Walcott becoming Trinidad and Tobago’s very first global throwing champion. Clearly, this was a young man with the potential to beat the world. He was one for the future. No one, though, could have predicted “the future” would come so soon. Less than one month after his World Juniors success, Walcott captured the Olympic title. Nineteen-year-old Walcott shocked the world, an 84.58-metre throw earning him top spot at the London Games. At last, 1976 men’s 100-metre champion Hasely Crawford had company in the elite club reserved for Trinidad and Tobago’s Olympic gold medallists. In addition to becoming the country’s second Olympic champion, Walcott had the distinction of being just the second athlete from the western hemisphere to capture the Olympic men’s javelin title, and the first black male thrower to secure gold in 116 years of the modern Olympics. Hampered by an ankle injury, Walcott was unable to make an impact in 2013. In 2014, he seized Commonwealth Games silver in Glasgow. And the 2015 season was a mixed bag: Pan American Games gold; an injured ankle; a superb 90.16-metre throw that earned him fourteenth spot on the all-time world performance list; a twenty-sixth-place finish at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing, with a 76.83-metre effort. It is now 2016, and Walcott is preparing for what he hopes
to be a second triumph in as many Olympic appearances. “My expectation is to go and defend my title by any means . . . just go back and win the gold. That’s basically my goal for Rio,” he says. “The lesson I have learned from 2012 to now,” Walcott continues, “is that you need to listen to your body. When it tells you to stop, you need to stop. When it tells you to rest, you need to rest. I have also learned in the past four years about some of my better abilities in throwing and some of my greater strengths, which can aid me in my quest to throw further.” Walcott has been an inspiration to many, his Olympic success encouraging a throwing culture in the sprint-focused Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago’s Shakeil Waithe and Tyriq Horsford and Grenada’s five-time Carifta Games champion Anderson Peters are among the region’s thriving javelin throwers. “It’s proven,” says Walcott, “that once somebody does something, others will follow, and others will try to surpass. So, knowing that competition is coming up, you have to do better and better every time to try to stay on top, not just in your country but in the world.” So Walcott is working hard on the road to Rio, maintaining a single-minded focus as he bids to stay at the top of the Olympic podium.
Date of birth: 2 April, 1993 Height: 1.88 m Weight: 90 kg Olympic highlight: 2012 men’s javelin gold Personal best: 90.16 m
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