Kevon Felmine

It was his dream to com­pete on the world's biggest sport­ing stage and now that he has achieved it javelin throw­er Keshorn Wal­cott should feel no pres­sure head­ing in­to to­day's fi­nal at the 2012 Lon­don Olympics in Eng­land. At the age of 19, many be­lieve the To­co lad can write his name in­to the his­to­ry books by be­com­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go's first ath­lete to win an Olympic medal in the javelin event and one of those peo­ple ex­pect­ing him to write his­to­ry is his for­mer coach, John "Slim" An­dal­cio.

So at 2.15 pm (T&T time), when he takes cen­tre stage at the Olympic Sta­di­um in Lon­don, he will be hop­ing for a re­peat, this time against more ac­com­plished and ex­pe­ri­enced throw­ers. Wal­cott left it late on Wednes­day when he qual­i­fied for the fi­nal on his last throw with a dis­tance of 81.75 me­tres in heat two, fin­ish­ing in 10th place over­all. He will go up against the likes of the Czech V&ia­cute;tezslav Vese­ly who qual­i­fied for the fi­nal with a throw of 88.34 me­tres and Nor­we­gian An­dreas Thork­ild­sen who has a per­son­al best of 91.59 me­tres set in 2006.

From throw­ing bam­boos and sticks on the beach­es of Trois Roche, To­co where he grew up, Wal­cott is now a three-time win­ner in the Un­der-20 javelin throw at the CARIF­TA Games, set­ting a new North, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Ju­nior record ear­li­er this year. He im­proved this record on May 27, with a throw of 80.11 me­tres in Ha­vana, Cu­ba-a feat that An­dal­cio is con­fi­dent that his for­mer pro­tege will ex­ceed.

Tents have al­ready been pitched and tele­vi­sion sets are ex­pect­ed to be placed at sev­er­al beach­es in To­co for the vil­lage's Fish­er­men's Fete to­day. Wal­cott's par­ents, Bev­er­ly Wal­cott and Endy King have made plans to be among close fam­i­ly when the last child of their three chil­dren, makes the throw of his life.

"It was one of Keshorn's dreams to reach the Olympics from the time he made it on world youth team. He came back from that com­pe­ti­tion and said he want­ed to be the best in the world," An­dal­cio said on Thurs­day. But with no prop­er fa­cil­i­ties and in­ter­est­ed spon­sors, he has had to fight an up­hill bat­tle. And the ques­tion has been asked: What made Wal­cott so fo­cused to be suc­cess­ful? An­dal­cio's sim­ple an­swer was, "Keshorn's work eth­ic is amaz­ing."

He has been coach­ing the sport for over 30 years and ex­plained the jour­ney which be­gan when Wal­cott was 16 years old and was more in­clined to­wards play­ing crick­et rather than throw­ing the javelin. " At age 16, I recog­nised his po­ten­tial. He was in­to crick­et but we en­cour­aged every­one to get in­to javelin. But it was amaz­ing. The first time he tried, he threw over 50 me­tres and that was very good. From there, he loved the sport at that point," An­dal­cio said.

De­spite the young­ster com­ing up against the best in the world, the coach said that in javelin, any­thing can hap­pen. He said Wal­cott has the abil­i­ty to raise his stan­dard on each oc­ca­sion, go­ing in­to the Games ranked at po­si­tion 18 but is now the tenth best throw­er in the world.

"He will just want to throw his per­son­al best and that can pro­pel him to a medal. He went in­to com­pe­ti­tion ranked 18th and he has risen to 10th and this has al­ways been his abil­i­ty, to raise stan­dards at every com­pe­ti­tion. If you have no­ticed his progress over the years, he has been amaz­ing. Def­i­nite­ly there is more to come," An­dal­cio pre­dict­ed.