Irv­ing Ward

Lead Ed­i­tor - Print

irv­ing.ward@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go javelin throw­er Keshorn Wal­cott and quar­ter-mil­er Jereem Richards have brought glo­ry to this coun­try with gold and sil­ver medals at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo, Japan.

Wal­cott start­ed off to­day in bril­liant fash­ion with a gold medal in his pet field event, stun­ning a world-class field with a throw of 88.16 me­tres.

The 32-year-old Wal­cott es­tab­lished the world-beat­ing throw on his fourth at­tempt to out­class two-time world cham­pi­on, Grena­di­an An­der­son Pe­ters (87.38m), and the Unit­ed States' Cur­tis Thomp­son (86.67m).

In­dia’s de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Neer­aj Chopra man­aged on­ly 84.03m to fin­ish eighth, while Pak­istan fron­trun­ner Ar­shad Nadeem was tenth with 82.75m.

Wal­cott, who had just man­aged to edge in­to the fi­nal as one of the best over­all qual­i­fiers af­ter fail­ing to at­tain the au­to­mat­ic dis­tance (84.50m) on Wednes­day with a throw of 83.93 me­tres, quick­ly put that be­hind him by sig­nalling his in­ten­tion to the field with a sec­ond round throw to­day of 87.83m to lead the pack, be­fore bet­ter­ing it two throws lat­er.

He now adds his World Cham­pi­onship gold to his break­out 2012 Olympic gold achieve­ment 13 years ago.

Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Wal­cott ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Wal­cott on the achieve­ment.

"On be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, I am ab­solute­ly thrilled to con­grat­u­late Keshorn Wal­cott on this phe­nom­e­nal achieve­ment," Watts said in a re­lease.

"His sea­son best throw of 88.16 me­tres in the fourth round demon­strates the ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent and ded­i­ca­tion that con­tin­ues to place Trinidad and To­ba­go on the world stage in ath­let­ics."

He added, "Keshorn's suc­cess is a tes­ta­ment to his un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion, the sup­port of his coach­ing team, and the strength of our na­tion­al ath­let­ics pro­gramme. This gold medal vic­to­ry will un­doubt­ed­ly in­spire the next gen­er­a­tion of young ath­letes across Trinidad and To­ba­go to pur­sue ex­cel­lence in sport."

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers Colm Im­bet and Dr Amery Browne al­so took to so­cial me­dia to con­grat­u­late Wal­cott.

Im­bert wrote: "Hearty con­grat­u­la­tions to Keshorn Wal­cott for win­ning the men's javelin throw at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships, with a fan­tas­tic throw of 88.l16m, beat­ing the best in the world ... His per­se­ver­ance over the last 13 years is ad­mirable."

Browne, mean­while, said, "Con­grat­u­la­tions to Keshorn Wal­cott on win­ning gold at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo, Lift­ing the im­age and pro­file of Trinidad and To­ba­go, again."

But soon af­ter­wards, Richards took to the track and, as if in­spired by the ef­forts of his coun­try­man, he too brought home a sil­ver medal with a sea­son best in the 200 me­tres fi­nal.

Start­ing in the al­ways tough lane two, Richards kept pace with the fron­trun­ners in the rainy con­di­tions and used a strong fi­nal 20 me­tres to cross the fin­ish line in 43.72 sec­onds, a new na­tion­al record. Just ahead of him was Botswana’s Bu­sang Collen Ke­bi­nat­shipi (43.53 sec­onds), whose com­pa­tri­ot Bayapo Ndori (44.20) se­cured the bronze.