Sean Nero

Rio Olympic bronze medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott is to­day ex­press­ing sat­is­fac­tion with per­for­mance at the just con­clud­ed glob­al com­pe­ti­tion.

The javelin ath­lete, who copped gold for T&T back in Lon­don 2012, jour­neyed to Rio de Janiero in Brazil, four years lat­er as part of the 32-mem­ber con­tin­gent in eight dis­ci­plines, with the aim of ac­ti­vat­ing the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee's 10 Gold medals by 2024 cam­paign.

But dur­ing the cov­et­ed sport­ing event, this coun­try's ath­letes were not able to re­tain their pol­ish. In the end, Wal­cott was the coun­try's last hope to se­cure pre­cious met­al and he de­liv­ered.

"Yes. I am very sat­is­fied. I am not sat­is­fied with my year but I am sat­is­fied with my Olympic re­sult," he said dur­ing a me­dia in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing fol­low­ing his ar­rival at the Diplo­mat­ic Lounge at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Pi­ar­co.

Wal­cott was re­ceived and wel­comed by Sports and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith, T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, SporTT chair­man Michael Phillips, his coach Is­mael Lopez Mas­tra­pa, chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ter­ry Ron­don and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for To­co/San­gre Grande, Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith.

Wal­cott ar­rived on lo­cal soil fresh from the IAAF Di­a­mond League se­ries which took place in Zurich, Switzer­land, fol­low­ing up on the meet in Paris, France, which he trav­elled to di­rect­ly from Brazil.

Asked what ex­pec­ta­tions he had in terms of re­wards, if any, from the state on be­half of the peo­ple of T&T and what mea­sures he hoped would be put in place to bol­ster the growth and de­vel­op­ment of track and field, he replied, "That is not my job. I'll like to see some­thing but that is not my job.

That is not my fo­cus. My fo­cus is to be an ath­lete. That's what I'm fo­cus­ing on do­ing." But it seemed the line of ques­tion­ing from the lo­cal me­dia be­gan to ir­ri­tate Wal­cott.

A re­porter asked how he felt putting in the work over the past four years, "to come back now and still get a medal."

"Ah," said Wal­cott! "That thing you just said... 'Still get a medal!' What does that mean? I got a medal. Four years lat­er, I'm the on­ly one from 2012 back on the podi­um, if you can see that. The next two win­ners weren't back on the podi­um from 2012. So you can't tell me: "I still get a medal', when on­ly 11 peo­ple in the his­to­ry of javelin have dou­bled medalled (back-to-back). Every­body was ex­pect­ing gold from me. I was ex­pect­ing gold, be­cause I al­ways set my ex­pec­ta­tions high but my coach and I knew it was go­ing to be hard to get. So, we went out there with our hopes high," he said.

"We went in there hop­ing that Almighty God blessed us with some­thing and he did. He blessed me with a bronze medal and now I am a two-time medal­list and now I can look for­ward to the fu­ture and know that I can move. The last few weeks be­fore the Olympics had been tough. My tech­nique wasn't the best. I think my tech­nique and my men­tal state of mind wasn't the best go­ing in­to the Games, so we had to work a lot hard­er. So, the re­sults we got go­ing in­to the fi­nals was some­thing great, even in the qual­i­fi­ca­tions. It was some­thing great know­ing what we went through."

When com­pared to the late Rod­ney Wilkes and Ato Boldon, both of whom com­pet­ed and suc­cess­ful­ly medalled at back-to-back Olympics, Wal­cott replied, "No dis­re­spect but I don't want to be in the com­pa­ny of any­body. I want to be in the com­pa­ny of my­self. I'm try­ing to achieve what I think I could achieve as a per­son. I was giv­en a tal­ent and I think I can achieve some great things, not just for me but for my coun­try. I'm grate­ful to know that I'm be­ing la­belled among some great names in­clud­ing Ato and Mr Wilkes. I'm young. Hope­ful­ly, I can achieve much more, not just in sport but out­side."

The cham­pi­on ath­lete de­clared that com­pet­ing at Tokyo 2020 was not his pri­or­i­ty con­sid­er­ing there were more im­me­di­ate events in his sport­ing sights.Ad­mit­ting that his World Cham­pi­onship per­for­mances had not been at their best, so far, Wal­cott ex­pressed hope that 2017 would see him im­prove his for­tunes in this dis­ci­pline.

"I am try­ing to change that. My plan is the same as every year, just to be healthy. Once I'm healthy I can get re­sults. For the past few years, I've been up and down with my health and this year I've been healthy. I was able to get some good re­sults at the end­ing of my com­pe­ti­tions," he said.

Dur­ing the Rio Games, Wal­cott de­nounced arm­chair crit­ics of team TTO, who he be­lieved knew noth­ing about the me­chan­ics of sports but still took the lib­er­ty to ac­cess so­cial me­dia plat­forms and trash lo­cal ath­letes who did not reg­is­ter medal per­for­mances. Yes­ter­day, he stood by his re­marks.

"That's their job. Whether you win, lose or draw, you are go­ing to have crit­ics. It's nor­mal. I haven't over­come any­thing be­cause I nev­er take them on be­cause I know what I am ca­pa­ble of do­ing. My coach knows what I am ca­pa­ble of do­ing. The peo­ple around me know what we are do­ing. So, it doesn't mat­ter. I think if they get pay for crit­i­cis­ing then they would be rich by now. Dur­ing the biggest com­pe­ti­tions you're go­ing to have the biggest crit­ics, com­ing out of nowhere, think­ing they are pro­fes­sion­als," he said.

"At the end of the day I al­ways say as an ath­lete, you are go­ing to have to deal with that no mat­ter what. If you're in sec­ondary school, you're in the Pro-League, you are go­ing to have to deal with crit­ics, but as an ath­lete you need to set your mind and un­der­stand that you are go­ing to have crit­ics. Once you want to be good, you are go­ing to have crit­ics."