Ato Boldon

Ato Jabari Boldon (born December 30, 1973) is a retired athlete from Trinidad and Tobago, the 1997 200 m World Champion and four-time Olympic medal winner. Only 2 other men in history, Frankie Fredericks of Namibia and Carl Lewis of the USA, have won as many Olympic individual event sprint medals (4). He was an Opposition Senator in the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament, representing the United National Congress, from 2006-2007. He is now a CBS and NBC Sports television broadcast analyst for track and field.

Career

Athletics

Boldon was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad to a Jamaican mother and Trinidadian father. He attended Fatima College (Secondary School) in Trinidad before leaving for the United States at age fourteen. In December 1989, as a soccer player at Jamaica High School (New York City) in Queens, his sprinting capacities were discovered by Jamaica High head coach Joe Trupiano as he sprinted by during a soccer practice session.

In his first major test, in his first track season, at age 16, he recorded a 21.2 seconds (200 m) and 48.4 seconds (400 m) double win at the Queens County Championships in 1990, earning MVP honors. After transferring for his final year from Jamaica High to Piedmont Hills High School in San Jose, California, Ato was selected to the San Jose Mercury News' Santa Clara all-county soccer team, and in 1991, he placed third in the California High School State Championships at 200 m. He won the Junior Olympic Title that summer in Durham, North Carolina, at 200 m.

At 18, Boldon represented Trinidad and Tobago at 100 m and 200 m in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, but did not advance out of the first round in either event. About a month later, Boldon bounced back to win the 100 m and 200 m titles at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Athletics in Seoul, South Korea, becoming the first double sprint champion in World Junior Championships history. He is still the only male sprinter in athletics history to win a World Junior title (100 m, 200 m in 1992) and World Senior title (200 m in 1997).

Ato was also an NCAA Champion while enrolled as a Sociology major at the University of California at Los Angeles, UCLA in 1995 in the 200 m dash. He secured an NCAA 100 m Championship in 1996, in Eugene, Oregon, in the final race of his collegiate career, setting an NCAA meet record of 9.92 which still stands. Boldon also held the collegiate 100m dash record of 9.90 seconds from 1996 until it was broken by Clemson University's Travis Padgett, who ran 9.89, in 2008.

Boldon won his first international senior-level medal at the 1995 World Championships, taking home the bronze in the 100 m. At the time he was the youngest athlete ever to win a medal in that event, at 21 years of age. The following year at the 1996 Summer Olympics, he again placed third in the 100 m and 200 m events, both behind world records. In 1997, he won a World Championship, taking the 200 m at the World Championships in Athens, Greece, his country's first and only world title to date in the Athletics World Championships.

The following year, Ato picked up gold in the 100 m at the 1998 Commonwealth Games held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, recording a record time of 9.88 seconds, beating Namibia's Frankie Fredericks (9.96) into silver and Barbados' Obadele Thompson (10.00) into bronze. That Commonwealth Games 100 m record remains unbroken.

In 1999, Ato ran 9.86 seconds twice for 100 m before sustaining a serious hamstring injury which forced him to miss the World Championships in Seville - the only Championship he missed in his career due to injury.

A silver medal in the 100 m and a bronze in the 200 m were his results of the 2000 Summer Olympics, which was a personal victory, considering his comeback from a career-threatening injury the year before.

In 2001, Boldon tested positive at an early-season relay meet for the stimulant ephedrine, and was given a warning, but was not suspended or sanctioned, since ephedrine is a substance found in many over the counter remedies, and Boldon had been treating a cold. “It is in no way something where the blame is laid on the athlete,” said IAAF General Secretary Istvan Gyulai of the positive result.

Also in 2001, at the World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Boldon finished fourth and out of the medals in the men's 100 m dash, and then ran the 2nd leg of his country's 4 x 100 meter relay that finished third in the finals. A 4x100 m relay medal was unprecedented in either World or Olympic competition for Trinidad and Tobago, and Boldon lists leading this team of young men (avg. age of his teammates was 19) to national history as his greatest accomplishment on the track in his career. The colors of his 2001 World Championship medals would change in 2005, as both his placings were upgraded - to bronze and silver medals, after all the times and performances of the American sprinter Tim Montgomery (who was 2nd in the 100 m and won the 4x100 m with the US team) were removed from the record books for serious doping violations. That brought Ato's career total to 4 World Championship medals, to match his 4 Olympic medals.

Ato was seriously injured in a head-on crash with a drunk driver in Barataria, Trinidad, in July 2002, and never ran sub-ten seconds for 100 m or sub-twenty seconds for 200 m, something he had done prior to 2002 on 37 different occasions combined, ever again. In 2006, a judge in Trinidad found that Ato was not at fault in that accident and he was paid substantial damages as a result. That accident left Ato with a serious hip injury, and he was a shadow of his former self as a sprinter, up until his retirement in 2004 at the Athens Olympic Games, when he failed to advance out of the first round of the 100 m heats, but not before captaining his country's 4x100 m relay to their first-ever Olympic 4x100 m relay final, where they finished 7th.

Ato Boldon is the eighth person to win a medal for Trinidad and Tobago at the Olympics and currently has the third most wind-legal sub-10 second 100m performances in history, with 28, behind former training partner Maurice Greene, who has 52, and Jamaica's former 100m World Record holder Asafa Powell.

Broadcasting

At the 1999 World Championships in Seville, Spain, Boldon could not compete due to a serious injury. The British Broadcasting Corporation hired him to do color commentary and analysis for their coverage of those Championships. He was an instant hit, and would be invited back to the BBC's airwaves, as a sideline reporter/analyst for the BBC coverage of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in 2000, from Sacramento, California.

In 2006, Ato wrote, produced and directed a 73-minute DVD film entitled "Once In A Lifetime: Boldon in Bahrain" which documented his voyage with fellow fans/Trinidad and Tobago nationals to the Kingdom of Bahrain, where the Trinidad and Tobago soccer team, the Soca Warriors as they are known, defeated Bahrain 1-0 in a playoff, to become the smallest country ever to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in soccer, in Germany 2006.

For the past 4 years, Ato has been in the broadcast booth for the U.S. Television network CBS as part of the commentary team for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. In June 2007, Ato made his debut for NBC Sports as an analyst for the 2007 U.S. National Championhips, and he also was an integral part of Versus and NBC's coverage of the 11th World Championships in Athletics from Osaka, Japan from August 25th to September 2nd, 2007.

In 2008, Ato Boldon was the sprint analyst at the USA Olympic Track and Field Trials and the 2008 Beijing Olympics for NBC Sports. [ NBC Television, "Olympics Evening", 16 Aug 2008 ] He estimated that had Usain Bolt gone all-out to the line for the 100m dash, he would have had a time of 9.59 [ International Herald Tribune, [http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/19/sports/OLYBOLT.php?page=1 As Usain Bolt resets the rules, experts wonder what the sprinter can't do] , "Christopher Clarey", August 19, 2008 (accessed 19 Aug 2008) ]

Ato is also part-owner of and frequent contributor to the website www.hellenicathletes.com, a site focusing primarily on world track & field.

Politics

Boldon was sworn in on February 14, 2006, as a Senator representing the Opposition United National Congress following the resignation of former Senator Roy Augustus, who resigned on February 13 in a dispute over the leadership style of then Leader of the Opposition Basdeo Panday. Boldon resigned on April 11th, 2007, after 14 months as a senator, also citing issues with Panday's leadership ability.

Letter to John Smith

On April 20, 2008, The Guardian published the contents of a letter believed to be by Boldon to John Smith, his former coach, accusing Smith, Maurice Greene and his former agent, Emmanuel Hudson, of betraying him by obtaining banned drugs without his knowledge, lying about Greene competing without drugs and damaging his own career [ [http://sport.guardian.co.uk/athletics/theobserver/story/0,,2275106,00.html Athletics: Fast and furious | Sport | The Observer ] ] .

Personal life

Ato Boldon married entertainment executive/manager Cassandra Mills in 1998 after a three-year courtship. Boldon and Mills divorced in 2005. Ato has 2 daughters.

In 2000, Ato was made a sports ambassador by the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and given a diplomatic passport. He is widely viewed as one of the all-time leading sportsmen in the history of the Caribbean, as well as one of its most internationally recognizable and outspoken.

Ato is a pilot, having earned his private pilot's licence in August 2005. He is a member of AOPA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association, and flies frequently out of Van Nuys Airport, the largest general aviation airport in the world, close to his home in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley.

Achievements

Personal bests

References

External links

* [http://www.atoboldon.com Ato Boldon's Official Website]
* [http://www.hellenicathletes.com HellenicAthletes.com]
* [http://www.boldoninbahrain.com "Boldon in Bahrain" DVD]
* [http://www.geocities.com/sprintingelite/statistics.html Sprint Statistics]