Julius Yego

Life and work

Julius Kiplagat Yego (born 4 January 1989) is a Kenyan track and field athlete who competes in the javelin throw. Nicknamed "Mr. YouTube" because he learned how to throw by watching YouTube videos of javelin athletes, Yego is the African record holder for the event with a personal best of 92.72 m.

He won the javelin title at the All-Africa Games in 2011 and at the African Championships in Athletics in 2012 and 2014; at the 2013 World Championships he placed fourth, losing a medal in the final round. In 2014, he became the first Kenyan to win a Commonwealth Games gold medal in a field event. At the 2015 World Championships he won the gold medal with a throw of 92.72 m, becoming the first Kenyan to win a World Championships gold medal in a field event. He won silver at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Yego was born in Cheptonon (Soba River) location in Tinderet, Nandi District (today Nandi County). He attended high school at Kapsabet Boys High School.

Yego became interested in the javelin throw as a youth and later he watched videos of athletes such as Jan Železný and Andreas Thorkildsen on YouTube to help with his technique and to learn how to train at a gym. He competed in the high school regional championships in 2003. In 2006 he won the national junior title and broke the Kenyan junior record with a throw of 67 metres. More renowned for distance runners, Yego quickly ascended to the top of the Kenyan scene. He won his first national title in the javelin at the age of nineteen in 2008 and defended it in both 2009 and 2010.

He earned his first national call up in 2010 and threw a personal best of 74.51 m to take the bronze medal at the 2010 African Championships in Athletics, which was held in Nairobi. He improved his best to 75.44 m at the Kenyan Commonwealth trials. He travelled to New Delhi for the 2010 Commonwealth Games and ended the competition in seventh place with a best throw of 69.60 m. In 2011 he still did not have a throwing coach, due to the lack of popularity of the event in Kenya. Despite this, he won a fourth straight Kenyan title then went to the 2011 All-Africa Games and became Kenya's first ever champion in the event, throwing a Kenyan national record mark of 78.34 m. This bettered Paul Lagat's fourteen-year-old national record (78.20 m). In respect of this achievement the IAAF (the sport's governing body) gave Yego a six-month scholarship to train alongside elite javelin coaches in Europe, with the aim of preparing him for the 2012 London Olympics.

After two months of training at the IAAF-accredited centre in Kuortane, Finland, Yego returned to Kenya in April 2012 and threw a new record of 79.95 m. This was within the Olympic "B" standard for the event and gained him the prospect of becoming the first Kenyan person to compete in the javelin at the Olympics. He improved the Kenyan record at Finnish Elite Games Series event in Kuortane on 22 July 2012, Finland throwing 81.12 metres During the London 2012 Olympics qualifying round, he broke his own national record by 69 cm, to make it 81.81 m. That throw was enough to send him into the final, where he placed 12th.

At the 2013 World Championships in Moscow Yego placed fourth, improving his Kenyan record by more than three metres to 85.40 m. He was the first Kenyan ever to qualify for a field event final at the World Championships, and was in bronze medal position until Russia's Dmitriy Tarabin passed him on his last throw. Track & Field News ranked Yego fifth in the world that year, the first time he'd been ranked in the top 10.

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