Re­cent­ly crowned men’s javelin cham­pi­on Keshorn Wal­cott is lend­ing his voice for more em­pha­sis to be placed on the nur­tur­ing of ath­let­ic tal­ents in the coun­try.

Speak­ing on his re­turn home at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Mon­day (Sep­tem­ber 22), along with Jereem Richards, who won sil­ver in the men’s 400m, Wal­cott said, “We have a lot of par­tic­i­pa­tion in ath­let­ics. Last year, I start­ed the (Gold­en Grass Ath­let­ics) Small League and we had at least 400 ath­letes com­pet­ing. So it is not that there are no ath­letes but the mid­dle is miss­ing.”

Wal­cott added that: “It is not go­ing to hap­pen like this. I am no ex­pert. I can­not stand here and tell you what to do when it comes to de­vel­op­ment. I just know that we need de­vel­op­ment and we need a struc­ture and a plan go­ing for­ward, know­ing that we are work­ing to­wards, not to­mor­row, not the next day, but know­ing that things are go­ing to work to­wards the long term, in the fu­ture.”

The To­co-born ath­lete, who won gold at the World Ath­let­ics Out­door Track and Field in Tokyo, Japan on Sep­tem­ber 18 with a dis­tance of 88.16m, fur­ther said he has been tak­ing no­tice of what oth­er coun­tries are fo­cus­ing on.

“I have had a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence when it comes to trav­el­ling and see­ing dif­fer­ent places and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with dif­fer­ent coun­tries, the teams, the coach­es. One thing that is com­mon is that they pay at­ten­tion and they fo­cus on de­vel­op­ment. They fo­cus not just on the elite ath­letes in front of them, they fo­cus on the ones to come next.

“I think if it is one thing we are miss­ing here, is know­ing there is no mid­dle ground. So you find tal­ent. Trinidad (and To­ba­go) has so much tal­ent but at the end of the day, there is no­body nur­tur­ing the tal­ent. Hope­ful­ly, things can change. “

Wal­cott’s gold­en throw was fol­lowed a cou­ple of hours lat­er by Jereem Richards, who raced sil­ver in the men’s 400m in Tokyo in a na­tion­al record of 43.72. Richards ap­pealed for peo­ple to come and cheer on lo­cal ath­letes when they com­pete at meets across the coun­try.

“Track and Field needs sup­port, not just fi­nan­cial. We ap­pre­ci­ate every­one that would’ve con­grat­u­lat­ed us. We make you proud (but) be proud at the sta­di­um when we lo­cal­ly please. We see the types of per­for­mances that come with a full crowd.

“I love to see the sup­port for foot­ball, for crick­et but when it comes to track and field, we have na­tion­al cham­pi­onships and lo­cal meets and no one comes there. The on­ly peo­ple who come are the par­ents and friends of ath­letes or the ath­letes them­selves. If we ex­pect ath­letes to do well, we need to start from home. We need to sup­port,

We need you to come out and sup­port these ath­letes. That sup­port is part of our sto­ry or jour­ney.”