Caribbean Beat — March/April 2020 (#162)

Peters won gold at the 2019
World Championships with a
throw of 86.89 metres
dpa/alamy stock photo
“
To me, it was always a natural thing to throw,” says
Peters. “As kids we used to regularly throw rocks to
get mangoes and golden apples.” But though he had
the best arm among all his friends — and broke his school record
the first time he tried the javelin at ten years old — the young
Anderson’s ambition was to run on the track, inspired like so many
Caribbean youths at the time by the invincible performances of a
certain Usain Bolt. He was good enough to run the 4x100m relay
for his country, but by the age of fourteen he’d started getting
recurring injuries, so he returned to the javelin.
While his compatriot Kirani James sent Grenada into raptures
with the country’s first Olympic medal (gold in the 400
metres) at the 2012 Games, Peters focused on another regional
gold medallist. “Keshorn Walcott had a big impact when he won
the London title,” he recalls. “It was an eye-opener for the Caribbean.
Young athletes no longer had to think the only way they
could become champions was in track events.” Peters maintains
a healthy competitive rivalry with the Trinidad and Tobago
thrower — “for years I’ve compared his stats against mine,” he
says — while observing Walcott’s influence and legacy. “We all
depend on each other more than we admit.”
An unprecedented run of five CARIFTA Games titles interspersed
with podium places at the junior Pan American and
World level kick-started Peters’s dreams of Olympic gold. It’s
almost an oxymoron to consider this lofty target against his
background in the small village of St Andrew, but it keeps him
level-headed, along with strong support from his family. The
parental factor extends further, and by good fortune, forged
the bond that has been crucial to Peters’s success: his mother
Antoinette is a close friend of his coach Paul Phillip. “Myself and
his mom went to school together,” says Phillip, “so she has given
me the right to become a ‘parent’ as well.” The golden outcome
If the world’s media seemed
shocked, Peters’s post-event aura
of calm confirmed his conviction
that he came to win at the 2019
World Championships
is Peters’s total belief in Phillip’s regime, from their first meeting
in 2011, as well as Phillip’s total belief in his charge’s ability to
become one of the greatest javelin throwers of all time. “Injury
is the only thing that can stop Anderson,” he says. It’s a match
made in sporting heaven.
68 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM