Burlington County’s Curtis Thompson stumbled into javelin throwing. For the Paris Olympics, he’s found his place.

How Curtis Thompson stumbled into track and field isn’t an unfamiliar story. A football player looking for a steady workout, to get faster, or, in Thompson’s case, to home in on a running technique, joins the track team in the spring and is ready to go when football two-a-days pick back up in the summer.

Thompson was on his way to playing college football when he joined the Florence Township Memorial High School track team as a freshman in 2011. His father, Scott, thought Curtis needed to focus on his 40-yard dash time, and one of the ways to improve his speed was to focus on his technique.

There was one problem: Curtis didn’t love running. One day, he asked the Florence track coach if he could “throw that stick thing.”

In some ways, a moment of laziness changed the course of his life.

“A little bit of laziness, but also the idea of throwing a spear, I gravitated toward that,” he said.

Thirteen years later, Curtis will throw that spear, the javelin, this week in Paris at his second Olympic Games.

He qualified for Paris in dominant fashion — his first-round throw of 83.04 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials was 3.47 meters farther than that of his closest competitor and was the second-best distance in meet history. Curtis was a 2016 NCAA champion and four-time All-American at Mississippi State, is one of the most decorated throwers in New Jersey history, and Paris would be his third Olympics — he finished 21st in Tokyo — if he didn’t miss out on the 2016 competition in Rio de Janeiro by 12 centimeters.

“The goal is to get out there and win a medal and come home with it,” the 28-year-old said.

And then get back to training, because he has eyes on competing again in 2028 in Los Angeles.

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Florence is a relatively small community in Burlington County. The kind of place where people know each other. Where 200 or so people gathered in a public park to watch Curtis throw the javelin three years ago after sending him off with a parade and lining their yards with signs supporting their favorite javelin thrower.

It’s because of that close-knit community that Curtis took his poor performance in Tokyo to heart, his father said.

“One of the things that I have to be super mindful of is for Curt to understand that he’s doing what he enjoys and he’s not responsible for everybody’s success,” Scott said. “When he doesn’t do as well as he wants, he thinks he’s letting the town down and everyone that put a sign in their yard.

“This time, I’m expecting a different result because he’s in a different space.”

Curtis is expecting different results, too. Last time, there were a lot of unknowns, he said. The Games were going on during the pandemic, and he didn’t have a support system with him on the road. This time around he will. His wife is in Paris, and so is his coach, Justyce Pollitt. Scott will be back home in Florence watching with the community, he said.

“Just to have that first experience under my belt and have an idea of what it’s going to be like when we get out there helps with training, being able to not be overwhelmed,” Curtis said. “Just understanding that we have a game plan set and it will work out in the end.”

Curtis lives and trains in Birmingham, Ala., where he has worked various jobs like working for a tree service and running private lessons and clinics. He also coaches the throwers at Spain Park High School, an experience that has brought him joy.

“I love being able to see the inspiration within the younger kids kind of grow for a sport and an event that I truly love and have grown to love for so long,” Curtis said. “To see that grow in the kids is kind of a bonus.”

Scott knew his son’s journey — from small-town Florence to NCAA champion to the Olympics in Tokyo — was a special one, and he was thinking of ways to document it to “maybe inspire someone else,” he said.

“He’s a normal guy who had a talent, worked on that talent, and it could be you,” Scott said. “It could be anybody who dedicates themselves to do that.”

The path to Paris is chronicled in Can I Throw That Thing?, a book authored by Scott, a social worker, with plenty of help from Curtis.

“It was pretty cool to see the side of the story from my dad’s point of view,” Curtis said. “As a kid, there’s a lot of things you don’t know or don’t think about.”

Scott said reminiscing about Curtis’ story was “almost like Thanksgiving dinner, when you’re sitting around talking about stuff, reliving memories, and getting the same fond feelings.” Like the time they went to a park to practice throwing the javelin and were told by police officers that it was not an activity meant to be done in a public place. Or how often Curtis had to miss out on things like class trips to attend a track meet.

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Curtis, Scott said, is a “normal guy … ‘Hey, go clean your room, go to bed, do the right thing.’”

“The karma that comes from it is the success that you have,” Scott said he tells Curtis.

The book was just a way to have an account for all of the sacrifices, Scott said.

“Later on,” he said, “somewhere down the road when he has grandkids, he’ll be able to point to it and say: ‘This is who I was.’”

As for the Olympics this week, Scott said “unfortunately” he’s treating it just like any other meet.

“I know it’s the Olympics,” he said. “I know it’s supposed to have this great prestige to it. But when I get to see him with a smile on his face, doing what he loves to do, that’s what makes me smile. That’s what makes me proud.”