World Cham­pi­onship gold medal­list in the men's javelin, Keshorn Wal­cott, has ex­pressed grat­i­tude and re­lief at win­ning the event at the 2025 World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onship in Tokyo, Japan.

Wal­cott pro­duced a best throw and sea­son’s best of 88.16 me­tres in this morn­ing’s fi­nal in Tokyo, Japan, find­ing the dis­tance on his fourth at­tempt out of six, which was good enough to beat a class field of some of the best ath­letes in the dis­ci­pline.

Al­ready an Olympic gold and bronze medal­list from Lon­don 2012 and Rio 2016, re­spec­tive­ly, Wal­cott added World Cham­pi­onship gold to his set this morn­ing and was re­lieved that the wait for his lat­est glob­al medal.

In a video in­ter­view post­ed by the Pan Amer­i­can Sports chan­nel, Wal­cott said, "It feels great, man, it feels great. It's been a long thir­teen years, just be­ing per­sis­tent. 2016 has been my last time on the podi­um, and the world cham­pi­onship medal has al­ways been out of my reach, but fi­nal­ly tonight I've got­ten it and I couldn't be more hap­py."

"I'm grate­ful to be able to de­liv­er this medal for my coun­try be­cause I know the peo­ple have been a lit­tle bit rest­less when it comes to medals, but I am fi­nal­ly able to de­liv­er once again a gold medal to my coun­try, so I'm thank­ful, you know.

The 32-year-old, who hails from Trois Roches, To­co, had al­so pre­vi­ous­ly won a ju­nior world cham­pi­onship ti­tle (Barcelona, 2012), a Com­mon­wealth sil­ver medal (Glas­gow, 2014), and Pan Amer­i­can gold and sil­ver in Toron­to (2015) and Li­ma (2019), re­spec­tive­ly.

He shared that a 13 year wait since his Olympic gold medal and ​the nine years since bronze in Rio de Janeiro was filled with sac­ri­fices and self-doubt.

"I would like to thank every­one who has been there sup­port­ing me, you know. It's been ups and downs, but I've had a lot of good peo­ple in my cor­ner keep­ing me there, keep­ing me mo­ti­vat­ed (telling me) keep try­ing and keep go­ing be­cause you know there are times when you just want to say, maybe it's too hard, maybe it's not for you."

Wal­cott cred­it­ed to­day's World Cham­pi­onship medal to a switch from his long-time coach, Cuban Is­mael Mas­tra­pa Lopez, un­der whom most of his pre­vi­ous suc­cess­es.

Fol­low­ing last year's Olympic Games in Paris, Wal­cott be­gan work­ing with Ger­man Klaus Bar­toni­etz, who pre­vi­ous­ly coached 2022 Olympic and de­fend­ing World Cham­pi­on Neer­aj Chopra of In­dia.

"I want to thank my coach for ac­tu­al­ly trust­ing me this year and giv­ing me the chance to be able to be coached by him. We made some good changes, and you can see it paid off tonight, so that was one of the biggest bless­ings I could say for 2025," he said.

Two-time world cham­pi­on An­der­son Pe­ters of Grena­da who placed sec­ond with a mea­sure­ment of 87.38 me­tres. Pe­ters, who won the event in Do­ha 2019 and Eu­gene 2022, pro­duced the sil­ver medal-win­ning at­tempt on his third throw, while Amer­i­can Cur­tis Thomp­son was third with a throw of 88.67m.

​Ger­many’s Ju­lian We­ber pro­duced the lead­ing throw in qual­i­fy­ing with 87.21m. He was on­ly able to man­age 86.11 on his sec­ond throw and placed fifth. Kenya’s 2015 world cham­pi­on Julius Yego was sixth with a best dis­tance of 85.54 me­tres.

​De­fend­ing world and Olympic cham­pi­on Neer­aj Chopra was down the field in eighth, pro­duc­ing 84.03 me­tres on his third at­tempt.