Ato Boldon

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Medal record
Men’s athletics
Competitor for  Trinidad and Tobago
Olympic Games
Silver	2000 Sydney	100 m
Bronze	1996 Atlanta	100 m
Bronze	1996 Atlanta	200 m
Bronze	2000 Sydney	200 m
World Championships
Gold	1997 Athens	200 m
Silver	2001 Edmonton	4x100 m Relay
Bronze	1995 Goteborg	100 m
Bronze	2001 Edmonton	100 m
Commonwealth Games
Gold	1998 Kuala Lumpur	100 m
Goodwill Games
Gold	1998 New York City	200 m
Silver	1998 New York City	100 m

Ato Boldon (born December 30, 1973) is a former athlete from Trinidad and Tobago, a former 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 as many Olympic individual event sprint medals. He is currently an Opposition Senator in the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament representing the United National Congress.

Contents 1 Career 1.1 Politics 1.2 Personal life 2 Achievements 3 Personal bests 4 External links

[edit] Career

Born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, Boldon left for the United States at age fourteen, in December of 1988, and became a soccer player. While practicing with the soccer team, his sprinting capacities were discovered by head coach Joe Trupiano while he attended Jamaica High School(New York City) in Queens, NY, but he quit playing soccer to focus on track in 1990, after a transfer for his senior year from New York to Piedmont Hills High in San Jose, California where he was selected to the San Jose Mercury News' Santa Clara all-county soccer team.

At 18, Boldon was sent to represent 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. Later that year, he won the 100 m and 200 m titles at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Athletics in Seoul, South Korea, becoming the first sprint double champion in World Junior Championship history. He is still the only male sprinter ever 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, and at 100 m in 1996, the final race of his collegiate career, he set a collegiate record of 9.92. His 9.92 seconds 100 m NCAA record still stands, over a decade later.

Boldon won his first international senior 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 "worlds" medal. He repeated that performance at the 1996 Summer Olympics, where he also 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 in that competition.

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, and beating Namibia's Frankie Fredericks (9.96) into silver and Barbados' Obadele Thompson (10.00) into bronze. That Commonwealth Games 100 m record still stands to date, as well.

A silver medal in the 100 m and a bronze in the 200 m were his results of the 2000 Summer Olympics, after he had been hampered by a career-threatening hamstring injury the year before which caused him to miss the 1999 World Championships competition entirely. It was at that 1999 meet, though, that he first got a taste of the broadcasting scene, when the British Broadcasting Corporation hired him to do color commentary and analysis for their coverage of those 1999 World Championships, since he was sidelined by injury. 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 Trials in 2000, from Sacramento, California.

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 test.

Also in 2001, at the World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, Boldon finished fourth and out of the medals in the men's 100m dash, and then ran the 2nd leg of his country's 4 x 100 meter relay that finished third in the finals. This would eventually change, as both placings were upgraded - to bronze and silver medals in 2005, after all the times and performances of the American sprinter Tim Montgomery were removed from the record books for serious doping violations. That brought Ato's career total to 4 World Championship medals, to match his four Olympic medals.

Ato was seriously injured in a head-on crash with a drunk driver in Barataria, Trinidad, in July of 2002, and never ran sub-ten seconds for 100m or sub-twenty seconds for 200m, 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 100m heats, but not before captaining his country's 4x100m relay to their first ever Olympic 4x100m relay final, where they finished 7th.

Ato Boldon is the eighth person to win a medal for Trinidad and Tobago at the Summer Olympics and currently is the 2nd most prolific "legal sub 10 second" 100 m sprinter in history, with 28, behind former training partner Maurice Greene who has 52. Frankie Fredericks of Namibia is the 3rd most prolific sub 10 sprinter, with 27.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Personal life

Ato Boldon married entertainment executive, Cassandra Mills, on October 3rd, 1998 after a three-year courtship. Boldon and Mills divorced in 2005. Ato has a daughter, Bri Courtney Boldon (born September 29, 1992), from a previous relationship.

In 2006, Ato wrote, produced and directed a 73-minute DVD entitled "Once In A Lifetime: Boldon in Bahrain" which documented his trip 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 Finals in soccer, in Germany 2006.

Ato is also a pilot, having earned his private pilot's licence in August of 2005. He is a member of the AOPA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association. For the past 2 years, Ato has been in the broadcast booth for the U.S. TV network CBS to do color commentary for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. He is scheduled to resume that role in June of 2007.

[edit] Achievements

Year	Competition	Venue	Result	Event
1992	IAAF World Junior Championships	Seoul, Korea	1st	100 m
1992	IAAF World Junior Championships	Seoul, Korea	1st	200 m
1995	IAAF World Championships	Göteborg, Sweden	3rd	100 m
1996	1996 Summer Olympics	Atlanta, Georgia	3rd	100 m
1996	1996 Summer Olympics	Atlanta, Georgia	3rd	200 m
1997	IAAF World Championships	Athens, Greece	1st	200 m
1998	Commonwealth Games	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	1st	100 m
1998	Goodwill Games	New York City, New York	1st	200 m
1998	Goodwill Games	New York City, New York	2nd	100 m
2000	2000 Summer Olympics	Sydney, Australia	2nd	100 m
2000	2000 Summer Olympics	Sydney, Australia	3rd	200 m
2001	IAAF World Championships	Edmonton, Alberta	3rd	100 m
2001	IAAF World Championships	Edmonton, Alberta	2nd	4x100 m Relay

[edit] Personal bests

Date	Event	Venue	Time
February 23, 1997	60 m	Birmingham	6.49
April 19, 1998, June 17, 1998, June 16, 1999, July 2, 1999	100 m	Walnut, CA, Athens, Athens & Lausanne	9.86 +1.8, -0.4, +0.1 & +0.4
July 13, 1997	200 m	Stuttgart, Germany	19.77

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Ato Boldon's profile on Afiwi.com