He was one of the first who ap­peared along­side Keshorn Wal­cott to con­grat­u­late him last Sat­ur­day when Wal­cott copped Olympic gold for T&T in Lon­don, Eng­land. But ex­act­ly who was that tall, bald­ing guy, some in T&T may have won­dered. It def­i­nite­ly wasn't Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts. It was in fact Wal­cott's coach, Cuban­born Ish­mael Lopez Mas­tra­pa who couldn't be­lieve that his pro­tege had cap­tured the gold medal.

"I was in shock, Keshorn was in shock. He couldn't be­lieve it, but he did it," Lopez re­called at his of­fice at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day. Lopez who has been one of the ma­jor forces be­hind Wal­cott's train­ing, has been so well cam­ou­flaged in the back­ground that few- save those in the sports field- may have recog­nised who he was when he stood hug­ging Keshorn just af­ter 4.30 pm last Sat­ur­day when the unas­sum­ing To­co 19-yearold had won T&T's on­ly Olympic gold in 36 years.

Wal­cott's achieve­ment was an ear­ly birth­day present for Lopez who turns 43 to­mor­row and who saw Wal­cott through his suc­cess­es at oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings. While Wal­cott's sto­ry be­gan in To­co, Lopez's own be­gan in east­ern Cu­ba and its cap­i­tal, Ha­vana, where he lived.

He came to T&T as part of an ex­change pro­gramme which the sport min­istry in the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion ini­ti­at­ed in 2004 with Cuban Gov­ern­ment. Lopez was man­dat­ed to coach throw­ing events - from shot put to javelin-at pri­ma­ry school lev­el. Speak­ing in heav­i­ly ac­cent­ed Eng­lish, Lopez re­called that his work nar­rowed down to main­ly javelin in­struc­tion and shot put since T&T lacked the full fa­cil­i­ties for ham­mer throw­ing.

By 2006, Lopez had set­tled in­to T&T life and mar­ried a T&T na­tion­al which al­lowed him to take up le­gal res­i­dence in Trinidad. Lopez be­gan coach­ing ath­letes for the Youth Cham­pi­onships and Pan Am Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships. "I met Keshorn in 2009," he re­called. And he im­me­di­ate­ly sensed the teenag­er had some­thing spe­cial. " I saw he had po­ten­tial. He had dis­ci­pline... one of his throws at the time was 59.30 me­tres and in the Un­der-17 group, that was very good ," Lopez said.

The coach sub­se­quent­ly be­came ac­quaint­ed with Wal­cott's To­co home­town since he jour­neyed to the vil­lage twice a week to teach his charge as part of the sport pro­gramme. In that same year Wal­cott head­ed to the World Youth Cham­pi­onship and showed how much he had im­proved. "I saw how re­laxed he was and flu­ent with his throws and the lev­el of co-or­di­na­tion. It was easy for him, it was very ev­i­dent he was a nat­ur­al.

But he al­so paid at­ten­tion to every­thing and seemed very an­a­lyt­i­cal," Lopez said. Wal­cott went on to top the Carif­ta Games. It was around that same time dur­ing a To­co train­ing day, Lopez no­ticed that Wal­cott's range had moved fur­ther up to 80 me­tres. "He has nev­er showed fear or ner­vous­ness. He was al­ways re­laxed but has tak­en the (javelin throw­ing) sport se­ri­ous­ly. Once he talked to me about an Ar­gen­tin­ian ri­val from one re­gion­al event and I told him 'You'd beat that guy."

Do you know that he met up with the same ri­val at the Lon­don Olympics and he re­al­ly did beat him!" Lopez said with a grin. Lopez said the fi­nal day of the Lon­don com­pe­ti­tion was a blur. Watch­ing the oth­er con­tes­tants, Lopez said he gauged that the T&T boy could be head­ing for a medal. " I just didn't know which one. But he went in feel­ing al­right, we had noth­ing to lose," he said.

But de­feat was not on the cards. Lopez said when the ver­dict came in, Wal­cott was in shock and dis­be­lief that he'd won. "But he was very, very hap­py. I can't de­scribe the mo­ment prop­er­ly," he said. It is the first time one of Lopez's charges has ever struck gold at the Olympics and the man who con­sid­ers him­self "al­most a Tri­ni now" be­lieves T&T can go on to cap­ture more, once the fa­cil­i­ties are in place for youths to train.

"We have the po­ten­tial here not on­ly for more javelin throw­ing but for the oth­er dis­ci­plines of throw­ing sports, but it must be de­vel­oped. "Keshorn's tal­ent doesn't hap­pen every day, he was clear­ly born to throw, but many oth­ers can de­vel­op their abil­i­ty al­so. T&T on­ly has to try," he said.