Some athletes turn up at the Olympic Games
with everyone expecting them to win.
But for every "must-win" there are dozens of "also-rans"
making up the field.
Every now and then, the stars align
and one of those "also-rans"
turns the world upside down and wins Olympic Gold.
Well, this is the story
of a humble young man's attempt to win
one of those miraculous medals.
He came from the village of Toco,
in the north-eastern corner of the island of Trinidad,
where football, cricket
and sprinting are the dominant sports.
Keshorn Walcott - Keshie, to his friends -
was 19 years old in 2012.
He was the World Junior Javelin Champion,
having taken up the sport just three years earlier.
As a boy, his first coach was YouTube.
Jan, what are you doing?
I'm training, on YouTube.
It's exhausting.
He studied videos of his role model,
two-time Olympic champion Andreas Thorkildsen, of Norway.
Thorkildsen had won gold with a throw of 90.57 metres
in Beijing four years earlier, an Olympic record.
And won in Athens in 2004.
In javelin, athletes have three attempts to throw
a metal-tipped spear, weighing 800g, as far as they can.
That's the weight of a wellington boot and a chicken.
On to the London Games,
Walcott's first senior competition,
which saw him come up against
the smooth, relaxed technique of his hero.
Walcott and his coach went into the Games primarily to gain
experience and enjoy it.
Into the qualifying round,
where the 19-year-old and 43 other competitors
tried to achieve the magic distance of 82 metres
that meant automatic progress to the final.
Only seven men managed it, including Thorkildsen,
who went through just one place behind
leader Vitezslav Vesely of the Czech Republic.
That left five places in the final still up for grabs.
Walcott just qualified
with a throw of 81.75 metres, in tenth place.
He had made it.
Into the final.
His first throw was a personal best and a national record.
Walcott's second throw was 84.58 metres.
Thorkildsen, with the experience
of two Olympic titles to his name,
couldn't even get over the 83 metres mark
and placed only sixth.
Ukraine's Oleksandr Pyatnytsya
could thwart Walcott's dream debut.
But he threw seven centimetres shorter
than the young Trinidadian.
Could Antti Ruuskanen, of Finland, topple him?
Nope.
Third and a bronze for Finland.
No-one, not even Walcott, could believe the gold was his.
I was even surprised I made the final. It was...
I just went out there relaxed
because I wasn't really looking for much.
I just went out there to enjoy
and eventually we'll enjoy a lot more.
It was the first time a non-European
had won this event since 1952,
when American Cy Young topped the pile.
Walcott set a national record
as he became the youngest javelin winner
in the history of the Games.
His Olympic medal was Trinidad & Tobago's first
in a field event
and he became only the second winner of Olympic gold
in his country's history,
following Hasley Crawford's victory in the men's 100 metres
at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.
I know they're celebrating more than me right now.
He wasn't wrong.
It sent Trinidad into a frenzy.
People went crazy, people went wild.
So wild, in fact,
that they gave Walcott a luxury home worth $2.5 million,
more than $150 USD in cash,
around 20,000 square feet of land,
stuck his name on the side of a Caribbean Airlines plane,
and even named a lighthouse after him.
Oh, and when he arrived back home,
the Prime Minister came to meet him at the airport
with thousands of supporters to give him a hero's welcome.
They declared a bank holiday in his honour.
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