media_artricles :: 2013

Walcott targets Shanghai redemption

T&T’s Keshorn Walcott will be one of seven athletes who struck gold last summer at the London 2012 Olympic Games, and among the 18 past and present Olympic champions, who will compete at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Shanghai, China, today. In the men’s javelin, surprise 2012 Olympic Games champion Walcott faces Norwegian great Andreas Thorkildsen, the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 gold medallist, from 8.34 am.

Speaking earlier this week at a pre-event press conference at the Shanghai Stadium in China, Walcott, who produced one of the shocks of the London 2012 Olympic Games when he emerged from the junior ranks to win javelin gold at the age of 19, was keen to shrug off any talk of pressure ahead of the meet. After an incredible season in which he also claimed the world junior title, one might expect Walcott to be feeling the weight of expectations as he moves into the big league of world athletics to compete weekly against the likes of Thorkildsen. Walcott was having none of it, however. “It hasn’t been distracting to me at all to have the Olympic title at that age,” he said. “Thorkildsen is a great athlete and competitor but there are other athletes, too, including others from the Olympics. “It will be a keen and tough competition but that’s OK, I am looking forward to it.”

Walcott finished sixth in his first ever Diamond League meeting in Doha last Friday (May 10), an event won by the Czech Republic thrower Vitezslav Vesely, with Thorkildsen third. Walcott was a little short of his best with 79.79 metres. But one defeat won’t do much to lesson the attention he’s now getting back in the Caribbean and, it seems, around the globe too. Indeed, Walcott accepts he’s something of a novelty for being a top-class javelin thrower from a region rather better known for its sprinters. “Everyone knows T&T for its sprinters,” said Walcott, who broke his national and area junior record to become the Olympic champion last August. “I just wanted to be different so I went into the field events. I put my mind to it, put in a lot of hard work, and together with my coach managed to improve. I’ve even come out as a champion.”

The Czech could be favourite for another win, although two Finns, Antti Ruuskanen and Tero Pitkämäki, shouldn’t be discounted. Ruuskanen won bronze at London 2012 while Pitkämäki beat Thorkildsen to take the 2007 world title. A third Finn, Ari Mannio, is also in the field, along with Kenyan record holder and African champion Julius Yego, another London Olympic finalist. On May 3, Walcott opened his season at the T&T Elite Twilight Games at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Mucurapo, by throwing the javelin 84.39 m while he ended sixth in Doha, last week, with a 79.79-metre throw. The men’s 400m, which takes place from 8.38 am, will be one of the most hotly contested pitching Grenada’s reigning World and Olympic champion Kirani James against the USA’s LaShawn Merritt, who took the gold medal over one lap of the track in Beijing back in 2008.

James also faces the two men he beat to claim the Olympic crown: Dominican Republic’s 2012 World junior champion Luguelin Santos, who clinched the silver medal in London, and T&T’s bronze medallist Lalonde Gordon, while European champion Pavel Maslak and Belgium’s Jonathan Borlée add even more class to the field. In the women’s shot put, T&T’s Cleopatra Borel, who has a season best throw of 17.75 will be the first in action at 6.30 am when she does battle with Aliona Dubitskaya (Belarus), USA’s Jeneva Mc Call and Michelle Carter, Chinese duo Liu Xiangrong and Gong Lijiao, as well as Anca Heltne (Romania), Anita Marton (Hungary), Russian Oleysa Sviridova and Germany’s Josephine Terlecki and Christina Schwanitz. In another highly anticipated event, the women’s 100m, double Olympic champion Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce takes on world champion Camelita Jeter of USA in a re-run of the London Olympic final.

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