Why Julius Yego did not compete in the Tokyo World Championships trials
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Reading Time: 2min | Tue. 29.07.25. | 12:35
Despite his absence from the trials, Yego remains Kenya’s only javelin representative and one of the most experienced athletes on the team.
2016 Olympic silver medalist and former world javelin champion Julius Yego was noticeably absent during the World Championships trials held on Tuesday, 22 July, at the Ulinzi Sports Complex. However, the 35-year-old athlete is still set to represent Kenya at the global event in Tokyo this September.
Yego, popularly known as "The YouTube Man" for learning javelin through online videos, confirmed that he opted out of the trials due to injury concerns.
“I did not compete; I requested not to compete because I already qualified for the World Championships. During the national championships, there was a problem with our runway, so I twisted my ankle. I wanted to rest it because we have major championships coming up. I’m aging, you know, so I did not want to get any other injury just before the World Championships,” he told Mozzart Sport.
Despite his absence from the trials, Yego remains Kenya’s only javelin representative and one of the most experienced athletes on the team. His qualification had already been secured, and his cautious approach is aimed at ensuring full fitness for what will be his seventh appearance at the World Championships.
Yego is widely credited with reviving Kenya’s interest in field events. In 2015, he stunned the world with a 92.72 m throw to claim the world title, making him the first Kenyan to win a global medal in a non-track discipline. That mark also ended a long global drought in 90+ metre throws since 2011.
Since then, javelin has maintained high standards globally, with at least one athlete reaching 90m every season, except in 2023, when the Czech Republic’s Jakub Vadlejch topped the charts with 89.51 m.
Back home, however, the future of javelin in Kenya remains uncertain. Yego is yet to see a strong successor rise through the ranks, raising concerns about continuity in the discipline once he retires.
“If we only depend on track events, we will not be able to compete with big countries like the USA because they supplement the medal collection across all the events in the championships.
If we do not do that, we will only be depending on track events, and how many track events can we win in a major championship? Very few, you can even count which events we can win in track,” he said.
His career has been a lone bright spot in Kenya's field event history. Over the past decade, no other Kenyan has won a medal in any discipline outside track events at the Olympics, World Championships, or Commonwealth Games.
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