The role of sport in the el­e­va­tion of our na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can­not be over­stat­ed. In To­co, ath­let­ic en­deav­our has proven to be a tool of lib­er­a­tion for gen­er­a­tions of youth, a plat­form for growth and the birth of a na­tion­al icon.

At 32, Keshorn Wal­cott is no longer the fresh-faced youth who shook up the world at the Lon­don 2012 Olympics.

But even as Wal­cott has ma­tured in­to a World cham­pi­on, the North East re­mem­bers his dri­ve to sur­pass even his own am­bi­tions and a qui­et son, who’d even­tu­al­ly grow in­to a liv­ing, breath­ing, throw­ing clar­i­on call for all who would dream.

Like most rur­al ar­eas in T&T, To­co and its en­vi­rons can fade from na­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tion; how­ev­er, through self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and an in­domitable spir­it, the area has made its own luck.

John "Slim" An­dal­cio’s "Jab Jab" ad­ja­cent whis­tle se­quence has sig­nalled the start of To­co Track and Field Club’s (TAFAC) train­ing ses­sions for eons.

The whis­tle and a stop­watch don’t usu­al­ly leave his neck ‘ex­cept to bathe’ he jokes on his front porch over­look­ing his wife’s hill­side gar­den.

An­dal­cio, the high­est-lev­el tech­ni­cal of­fi­cial in the Caribbean and the coun­try’s lone Lev­el 5 World Ath­let­ics com­bined events coach, has al­so trained Olympians Por­tious War­ren and Ron­del So­ril­lo, and pro­fes­sion­al net­baller Saman­tha Wal­lace, as well as Micky Ruben, whom he trained as a phys­io­ther­a­pist and went on to treat Shelly-Ann Fras­er Pryce and Us­ain Bolt, among a long list of oth­ers.

“I have been ask­ing every­one to sup­port him to the fullest, even be­fore, I was telling peo­ple we need to get be­hind him and give him our prayers and bless­ings,” An­dal­cio said about his be­lief in the Wal­cott fam­i­ly’s most pro­lif­ic ath­lete on Thurs­day.

“I was fol­low­ing it right through I was up in Matelot fol­low­ing on my com­put­er and I felt, not just re­lief but it is an ex­hil­a­rat­ing feel­ing,” An­dal­cio rem­i­nisced “This was planned a long time ago, Keshorn wasn’t sup­posed to win Lon­don, Lon­don was a sur­prise but it is a long term goal, so I’m glad that he has fi­nal­ly done it.”

Sun­day Guardian: So You’ve known Keshorn for most of his ath­let­ic life…

John An­dal­cio: (laughs) No, no, be­fore that, I was An­na-Lee Wal­cott’s coach, Keshorn’s aunt, so I used to be home by them and I know Keshorn as a ba­by.

SG: When did you re­alise the great­ness in the man?

JA: Well, ac­tu­al­ly, the per­son that recog­nised it was a man called Nerell Ser­a­pio. Keshorn was play­ing crick­et at the time and as a club, we en­cour­age peo­ple to play all the sports.

And the boys were throw­ing javelin, and the javelin land­ed close to him, so they say, “Watch out,” and he said, “No, I will come and show al­lyuh af­ter”, and when he threw the javelin, he threw it 50 me­tres. I was in the (Unit­ed) States that time and Ser­a­pio called me and told me what hap­pened. All of us know in To­co what that means, so we knew the sig­nif­i­cance of it and that’s where he start­ed.

SG: Hav­ing trained him and hav­ing been so in­te­gral in his suc­cess, what type of ath­lete did he show him­self to be?

JA: The sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence that sep­a­rates Keshorn from all the rest of tal­ent, and we have a lot of tal­ent in To­co, is Keshorn’s work eth­ic. A lot of oth­er ath­letes with sim­i­lar type of tal­ent didn’t have that and there­fore that’s what made the dif­fer­ence.

He fur­ther de­scribed Keshorn as an ex­treme­ly coach­able ath­lete who nev­er missed a train­ing ses­sion, even hav­ing to be turned back by coach­es on days when he showed up un­well.

At each point of the To­co Main Road that the Guardian Me­dia team stopped, an­oth­er branch of an ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly of sorts re­vealed it­self.

Over­look­ing the To­co An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School, Ju­liana May­ers, an­oth­er el­der who knew young Keshorn as a tot, de­scribed him much in the same way many came to know him on a na­tion­al scale.

“What I could tell you about Keshorn is he was very hum­ble, very dis­ci­plined, and know­ing his par­ents, es­pe­cial­ly the moth­er, very qui­et and with a lot of de­ter­mi­na­tion to­ward what he want­ed to pur­sue with his life. He was in school at To­co Sec­ondary with my daugh­ter and she used to talk very high­ly about Keshorn; he al­ways had that po­ten­tial to do very well,” May­ers said.

Asked what his lat­est tri­umph meant to her per­son­al­ly. Ju­liana could hard­ly con­tain her emo­tions.

“For him to achieve gold at the Worlds,” she said, al­most at the top of her voice. "It was such an amaz­ing achieve­ment and it was a joy for me see­ing that he did it at the Olympics and then he strug­gled so much af­ter 13 years to get that gold. I was very, very ex­cit­ed for him, I think we all were. I re­al­ly ap­plaud his achieve­ment not on­ly for him­self but us as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.”

Ju­lian­na, who was sit­ting in front of her tele­vi­sion for the Olympic Gold medal, re­called lit­er­al­ly jump­ing for joy when news reached her that he’d fi­nal­ly topped the World.

Her daugh­ter, La­tre­sa May­ers, just across the street and over­look­ing the se­date Grande L’anse Bay, re­mem­bers her class­mate as qui­et and soft-spo­ken.

“Rel­a­tive­ly the same Keshorn you see to­day,” she said.

SG: How did you feel about watch­ing him first be­come an Olympic cham­pi­on and 13 years lat­er a World cham­pi­on?

La­tre­sa May­ers: As a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, that’s a very proud mo­ment for us and I felt very proud for Keshorn. It’s an ac­com­plish­ment rur­al com­mu­ni­ties don’t of­ten see. We are of­ten over­looked and for Keshorn to rep­re­sent us on that scale and bring us gold twice is a re­al­ly amaz­ing feel­ing and we are tru­ly proud of him.

SG: From what you know of him, were there any signs of this great­ness?

LM: Of course, every­body from To­co has great­ness! Keshorrn was al­ways par­tak­ing in sport, not so much javelin, he used to be a run­ner and we were in the same sports club (To­co TAFAC). I used to run as well; the abil­i­ty was al­ways there, so it was just him bring­ing him­self to great­ness.

SG: What does it say that To­co TAFAC con­tin­ues to do well up to this day? What does it say about the tal­ent that comes out of this com­mu­ni­ty?

LM: We on­ly have more great­ness to show the rest of the coun­try, the rest of the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as well. Keshorn did a great job of show­ing the young peo­ple that they too can achieve; they just have to be per­sis­tent and pa­tient and even­tu­al­ly they will be suc­cess­ful.

Fur­ther up the road on a per­fect beach day, Garvin Williams re­turned from the for­est to his res­i­dence right next to the Wal­cott fam­i­ly home.

He re­called evenings spent dis­cussing am­bi­tions with his ‘child­hood best friend’ un­der the light of the lamp post be­tween both yards.

“We used to al­ways come and sit down and he would al­ways say he want­ed to go to the Olympics,” Williams re­count­ed, “And I would al­ways sup­port him, so the day he ac­tu­al­ly went to the Olympics we went up there; it was his moth­er, fa­ther, my aunt and I and when we saw he won the gold I ran down from there and al­most got bounced I was so ex­cit­ed.”

“I al­ways be­lieved in him, he will al­ways be my friend and I will al­ways for­ev­er be proud of him,” he said.

Age is just a num­ber

When he won the 2012 World Ju­nior and Olympic ti­tles, be­com­ing the first per­son to hold both ti­tles as well as the youngest Olympic win­ner of the event in the process, Keshorn was still a stu­dent of To­co Sec­ondary (for­mer­ly To­co Com­pos­ite).

Wal­cott’s lat­est gold, won with a throw of 88.16 at the Japan Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Tokyo, made him the sec­ond-old­est World Cham­pi­onship gold medal­list in the men’s javelin. It’s a tra­jec­to­ry that few could en­vi­sion and few­er still could be­lieve.

“It will al­ways mean some­thing unimag­in­able, from a small vil­lage like this, some­thing like that is very big,” Williams ob­served. “It shines up the vil­lage and makes us all a bit brighter.”

He ex­pressed hope that Keshorn’s suc­cess would in­spire the var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties to make more crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tions in­to the com­mu­ni­ty at large, not just on the sport­ing lev­el but al­so to en­hance the over­all qual­i­ty of life.

Fi­az Iza­hat has taught Met­al Work at To­co Sec­ondary for 22 years, and though he nev­er taught “Keeshie”, he un­der­stood him as a guy who was al­ways will­ing to take on a chal­lenge.

Iza­hat says through the gen­eros­i­ty of his friends, he was able to as­sist Keshorn’s ca­reer, hav­ing wit­nessed the tal­ent brim­ming out of an­oth­er of To­co’s most promis­ing raw prod­ucts but there was some­thing more.

“Keshorn Wal­cott is an em­bod­i­ment of dis­ci­pline. Yes, he had nat­ur­al tal­ent but the coach, when they saw that, they har­nessed that and he was a guy he nev­er gave up. De­spite his ob­sta­cles and draw­backs, he al­ways want­ed to suc­ceed and his achieve­ments speak vol­umes for that.”

SG: And what does this mean as some­body who has seen him in his for­ma­tive years and what he has be­come 13 years lat­er?

Fi­az Iza­hat: It speaks vol­umes for the coun­try. Eu­rope has ruled in javelin and for a lit­tle West In­di­an guy to come from nowhere and win that, it re­al­ly sends a mes­sage to the world and to me, it is the great­est thing our coun­try could ever wish for.

Wal­cott, a great in­spi­ra­tion

SG: And for the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of To­co Sec­ondary, what does that mean?

FI: He was a great in­spi­ra­tion. I re­mem­ber vivid­ly when he used to throw the javelin and when he won the medal, the school was in a hype, stu­dents want­ed to throw javelin, you could see the ex­cite­ment in the stu­dents. I think more than ever, now it sparks that flame with­in the in­di­vid­ual, not just in To­co here but in the coun­try at large.

And you will see at the World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onship, there are oth­er Caribbean ath­letes there al­so and I think the world is al­so look­ing on, it’s not some­thing they're ac­cus­tomed to.

The coun­try and the world should re­al­ly un­der­stand, when ath­letes do achieve things, you could see they need help. Our coun­try is not so sound in terms of in­fra­struc­ture, and I hope in fu­ture, who­ev­er it might be, ho­n­ours our ath­letes for who they are.

It’s a point An­dal­cio is keen to dri­ve home in the longest and most in­for­ma­tion-dense of our myr­i­ad in­ter­views in To­co and en­vi­rons.

SG: How sig­nif­i­cant is it that we have an Olympic and World cham­pi­on com­ing from T&T, more specif­i­cal­ly, To­co?

John An­dal­cio: We have pro­duced these ath­letes with­out the fa­cil­i­ties? I don’t think that peo­ple recog­nise the sig­nif­i­cance of it. Ato Boldon is one of our great­est ath­letes and he didn’t achieve that. I don’t think the gov­ern­ment re­alis­es yet the sig­nif­i­cance of this thing be­cause to name a white ele­phant in San­gre Grande af­ter him is an in­sult, it don’t have no gym in that, you can’t throw javelin there.

He de­serves a sta­di­um, that’s what he de­serves. We, the peo­ple of To­co, de­serve a sta­di­um.

What oth­er school in the coun­try, or the Caribbean or maybe even in the world can boast that they had a per­son in high school win­ning an Olympic gold medal in the javelin? And af­ter that, oth­er peo­ple re­alise that black peo­ple could throw javelin too.

So now we have peo­ple like An­der­son Pe­ters, Julius Yego, and Neer­aj Chopra and the man from Pak­istan, as a mat­ter of fact, the whole podi­um in Tokyo was black peo­ple. His­tor­i­cal­ly, it was a white peo­ple's sport and Keshorn broke that mould.

There is so much tal­ent, but what is be­ing done to de­vel­op the tal­ent? You have seen the state of the grounds. I have two top-class sprint­ers and I can’t ask them to run on any of the grounds in the area be­cause they will dam­age them­selves. And that’s the state of the fa­cil­i­ties in our area and we have al­ways been treat­ed that way; we de­serve bet­ter than that.

De­spite the cir­cum­stances, To­co’s res­i­dents ap­pear pre­pared to con­tin­ue to strive, whether or not help is com­ing, and with their stan­dard bear­er out front, con­tin­ue to press on to­ward their goals with a qui­et re­solve and dogged de­ter­mi­na­tion.