It’s won­der­ful and na­tion­al self-as­sert­ing news that two of our world-class ath­letes have brought glo­ry to this lit­tle na­tion at the World Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo, Japan. As all of Trinidad and To­ba­go knows by now, Keshorn Wal­cott won gold in the javelin throw with a world-beat­ing toss of 88.16 me­tres while Jereem "The Dream" Richards lift­ed the sil­ver medal in the 400 me­tres fi­nal with a new na­tion­al record run of 43.72 sec­onds.

In the in­stance of Wal­cott, now 32, he de­feat­ed his West In­di­an coun­ter­part in the event, Grena­di­an two-time world cham­pi­on An­der­son Pe­ters, whose 87.38 me­tres throw earned him the sil­ver medal. Wal­cott’s great ac­com­plish­ments in this, an event in which Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have a long and dis­tin­guished his­to­ry of per­form­ing, be­gan as far back as 2012 at the Lon­don Olympics when he was a mere 19 years old but an­nounced him­self on the world stage by throw­ing the javelin 84.58 me­tres to win on­ly the sec­ond gold medal in the games for this coun­try.

“I have been here for 13 years,” was his tri­umphant cry af­ter yes­ter­day’s event.

That Wal­cott, from the fish­ing vil­lage of To­co in the far north of Trinidad, has done re­mark­ably well to have sus­tained his in­ter­est, and con­tin­u­ing high-lev­el par­tic­i­pa­tion at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el for over a decade, is in­dica­tive of his great re­silience and dis­ci­pline.

With­out seek­ing to di­min­ish in any way the achieve­ments of our oth­er dis­tin­guished in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes who have won gold and sil­ver medals at the Olympics and oth­er world class games, Wal­cott, for his gold and bronze Olympic Games medals, his gold at the World Cham­pi­onships and gold and sil­ver medals at the Com­mon­wealth and Pan Amer­i­can Games, must sure­ly now be one of this coun­try's great­est in­ter­na­tion­al track ath­lete.

To add to his ap­peal is his some­what low-key, self-ef­fac­ing per­son­al­i­ty, not the type who has blown his trum­pet with loud boast­ing. More­over, Wal­cott seems good for fu­ture in­ter­na­tion­al games and ad­di­tion­al suc­cess.

For Richards, it’s yet an­oth­er oc­ca­sion when the young man from the deep south­ern Bor­ough of Point Fortin has reestab­lished him­self amongst the great quar­ter-mil­ers of the era, clock­ing his fastest time ever.

The sec­ond plac­ing was par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant, giv­en that Richards was not count­ed amongst the favourites who qual­i­fied for the fi­nal and was drawn in lane two, one of the tough­est as­sign­ments for ath­letes and made more dif­fi­cult by the rainy con­di­tions. He showed, though, that dis­ci­pline and de­ter­mi­na­tion can over­come any ob­sta­cle in out­last­ing the pre-event favourites to fin­ish just be­hind Botswana’s Collen Ke­bi­nat­shipi.

Richards, 31, is a two-time Com­mon­wealth Games 200-me­tre event cham­pi­on, a 200 me­tres World Cham­pi­onships bronze medal­list in 2017, a 2022 World In­door Cham­pi­onships gold medal­list in the 400m and fin­ished a cred­itable fourth in the 400m at last year's Olympic Games in France.

With the ef­forts of these two ath­letes, there­fore, the time is here for the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor to not mere­ly line a mo­tor­cade from Pi­ar­co to the city for the two world cham­pi­ons, but to utilise them to in­spire and coach those who will take over the chal­lenge of be­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors ahead. A qual­i­ty up­grade of fa­cil­i­ties to host in­ter­na­tion­al games as vi­su­al en­cour­age­ment for the young ones is al­so need­ed mov­ing for­ward.