I feel need to go on about Ato Boldon, I did, but lets rant little bit more.
100m 9.86
200m 19.77sec
Ato Boldon was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to Guy and Hope Boldon.
In 1988 He leaves Trinidad for New York City, where, while playing soccer, he is discovered by head track coach Joe Trupiano at Jamaica High School in Queens.
And so it happened.
Prime Time Ato Boldon
height:5”9
Weight:175pounds
Golden Boldon
Trindad and Tabago
In 1999 Maurice Greene’s best year. Who was the only person to beat Maurice Greene.
Ato Boldon was the only person that year to defeat Greene. 9.86 Lausanne Meeting.
On the night when Maurice Greene broke the world record and ran 9.79sec, Ato Boldon was in second place and ran 9.86.
On the same day, Ato Boldon and Maurice Greene lined up in the 200meters. Ato Boldon ran and won in 19.86sec, Greene in 3rd in 20.1xx i think.
In 1998 the year after Greene won the world Championships. Ato Boldon was ranked number 1 in the world.
9.86 was his fastest time that year, and also ran 9.88 commonwealth Games record, into a headwind. (He was truly the fastest man in the world that year)
Ato Boldon is the second most dominate sub-10 100m sprinter of all-time. Before Maurice Greene there was Ato Boldon, in 1996 it was Ato Boldon and scared the world of sprinting. In 1995 he was the youngster ever 100m world championship medalist in history up to that point.
Threatening to break the world record leading up to the Atlanta, final. And coming into them Championships he was still at University.
Some athletes when they run sub-10 for the first time, barely do it. Ronald Pogon, 9.99.
Ato Boldon didn’t just break 10seconds, he destroyed it 9.93sec was his first ever sub-10. 1996.
Ato Boldon sadly missed 1999 world championships because of a back injury. And he was never the same since. Greene and Boldon where almost identical, same height 5”9 same weight 175pounds when in their prime. I beleave Boldon never reached his poteintal over 100m, he could of run 9.7xx.
Also in 2002 he was in a tragic car crash which, left him thinking that it was the end of his career. He was hit head on, on a one way road, by a drunk driver. The drunken Driver lost his legs, Boldon damaged his hip badly. And this ultimate end his career. He has also said himself, all the years of sprinting its hard on the body especially when your that fast.
http://www.atoboldon.com/truestory/
Ato Boldon did stuff that no other athlete sprinter did before. Possible the greatest 100m/200m combination sprinter ever, maybe Frank Fredrick’s just edges it.
He was the first sprinter in history to RUN SUB-10 AND SUB 20 on the same night. He has (8 doubles) same night. Just sit back and think about that, his fastest ever was 9.86 100m and 45minutes later 19.86sec. Could Asafa Powell do that, No. Its time for him to go home. Justin Gatlin struggles to run sub-20, Ato Boldon had them for breakfast.
Ato Boldon and Maurice Greene both changed the game, the dawn of the complete sprinter.
Yet again, people need to know about Ato Boldon. Not only is he a great ambassador for the sport. He is now Cenator of Trinidad’s and Tobago’s main government parties, or some sh*t like that. This man is the Main Man.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-04…ise/wwise9.html
Career
1992 Goes to represent Trinidad and Tobago at the Olympics 18years Old. Double wold Junior Champion 100m/200m. South Korea where he wins 2 gold medals in the 100 and 200 meters. This is an unprecedented feat, as no-one in history had ever before won these two. 10.22 second best for 100 meters by the year’s end.
The world’s track press heralds the future.
1994 Commonwealth Games Finalist 4th
1995 World Championships Bronze Medalist
1996 100m Olympic Bronze Medalist 9.92sec, 200m Bronze Medalist 19.80sec.
1997 Gold World Champion 200m, 100m finalist 5th.
1998 ranked Number one in the world 9.86sec, Commonwealth Champion 9.88sec Record.
2000 Olympic 100m Silver Medalist 9.99sec
Olympic 200m Bronze Medalist
2001 World Championships Finalist 4th 9.96
4x100m Bronze Medalist
2002 Injury
2003 World Championship semi Finalist
2004 Wins his Trinidad Tobago trails in 10.08sec, pulling up in the last 20m with a injury. Still makes it to the Olympics goes out in the First round.
4x100m Olympic final 2004 was his last ever championship final, 3rd leg.
One of the true greats of the sprinting changed the Game. Change the game, its people like Ato Boldon that captured my imagination as a youngster, its why am here talking and track and field. It’s why I feel so passionately about sub-10 and sub-20 I understand the what it means, and I respect it, don’t try and step to me uneducated about these kind of athletes. Ato Boldon done great things ran 9.86 into a headwind still one of the fastest times of all-time statically. The only thing that escaped him was the Olympic Title, same with Franky Fredricks.
I did it again, and am gonna leave you people, with something Ato Boldon wrote, it describes what the 100meters is, what the Athlete, the Lion in the Jungle of this sport. This was written by a man who knew along time ago, THAT HIS TIME IS COMING CLOSE, ITS SAD, sometimes I think. Maurice is still in the game and the reason why I think he is, is because he is searching for that defining moment, he still has his pride. I believe if he would have won in 2004 first athlete since Carl Lewis to defend there 100m Olympic Title. I think that would have been his defining moment, everyone was writing him off, people media “slow mo”. He won Us trails, against the odds, and was fighting again, like a Lion for the pride “He has a tattoo on his arm of a Lion and G.O.A.T greatest of all-time.
Discovery Lions
Sunday 22 August, 2004
If you watch the Discovery Channel as much as I do, then you know about those great “LION shows” as I call them. They usually trace the life of a lion, from birth to death. The birth part is beautiful. There isn’t much that is cuter to watch than a lion cub. Then the lion learns to hunt, gets a pride of his own and so on. The part that hurts to watch is when some other younger lion comes along, and the older lion is kicked out of the pride, and often, goes off to die. I hate that part, but I always watched it knowing that young, bad-ass lions, get old eventually.
Now, before you go off on the ’age is only a number’ thing, hear me well - Mileage isn’t. Age, as it relates to sprinters, is different than age as it relates to ’civilians’. If I am was a 30 year-old who ran the 100 maybe a few times a year, then yes, I’d say ’don’t stop til you get enough’. This is not one of those cases, as it relates to me. At 18, in 1992, I won the 100 and 200 at World Juniors. No-one had done that before. There, my clock started ticking. LION CUB.
’93 - 10.23 and attempted double at Worlds (100 and 200), 94 Commonwealth Games 10.07 also got to 200m semis.
95 Worlds - Youngest ever 100m medalist - LION GETS HIS OWN PRIDE.
96 - 00 LION’S PRIME. I did my damage in those years. World 200m champ, 100m and 200m same-day doubling, world’s fastest times in 100m/200m in 98,etc.
’01 - 4th at Worlds, unable to run the 200m with a back injury - LION BEGINS TO WEAKEN.
02-04 LION MEETS HIS END.
It is very simple for me to understand the rise and fall, and most athletes can trace a very similar path. People talk about Maurice and I as though the 6 month age difference between us is proof that I have lots more left in me, but when I was running the 100 and 200 in Atlanta he was in the stands. When I was getting 3rd in 1995 he didn’t make it past the 2nd round. In ’92, amonth after the Games in Barcelona, I was in Seoul, Korea beating every junior in the world. In 2 events. He was in high school. The number of races at 100 and 200 that I have run since 1992 is the reason why I know now that to try to get ’blood’ from my ’rock’ is pointless.
Here in Athens, I see other examples of people, my age, who, I guess, are facing their mortality as well. Stacy Dragila was Olympic Champ in the pole vault 4 years ago - the event’s first star. She didn’t get out of qualifying here. The UK’s Denise Lewis didn’t survive the heptathlon. She, too, was a defending Olympic Champ from Sydney 4 years ago. U.S. Shot putter, John Godina, my former UCLA teammate, also had an awful Games. There are many of us 30-somethings who had a rude awakening here. UK sprinter Darren Campbell, 2nd to me at those same World Juniors in 1992, didn’t get out of round 1 in the 100. Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie, arguably the greatest distance runner ever, was 5th here at 10K, to his younger fellow Africans (insert great lion analogy here). It is difficult to watch my generation of sprinters/track athletes on the way out, but that is the way it goes. Do all you can when you have the chance, but have the sense to move on.
Before I end, Frankie Fredericks and Gail Devers come to mind. Gail, I think, made a huge miscalculation (again) in running the 100m , in which she failed to advance to the finals, and now she goes semi-tired into a hurdle race loaded with young ’lionesses’. Canadian World Champ Perdita Felicien eliminated Gail last year in the semi-finals, after Gail ran the 100 and was last in the ’03 final. I want my fellow Bruin to win her long-awaited Olympic 100m hurdle gold medal badly, but I can’t understand why she thinks running the 100m first at a championships is the way to do it, when her similar attempt in Paris was such a disaster last year. Only she knows, and maybe she knows something I don’t.
As for my good friend and long-time rival Frankie, who, despite being a ’doubler’ like myself, at 36, is still competing - people forget that he is on the comeback trail. He missed 2000 and 2001, still had a taste for it and came back. Good for him. He, too, is out of the 100, but he has a good chance of being in the final in the 200, and I’ll cheer for him over all others.
Merlene Ottey, a long-time ’doubler’, still going, at 44? Well, she should run til she is 50 if she is competitive. She hurts no-one in that. Just don’t ask me to be running for 14 more years. I have other things to do. If the 2 remaining thirds of my life are as good as the first, then I have a lot to look forward to.
As for the men’s 100 tonight, well it doesn’t matter if you are the greatest lion of all time (which he is, despite what Bob Costas and his ridiculous on-air comparisons of long jump medals to sprint medals say), a younger lion inevitably will succeed you. I’ll go out on a limb and say POWELL, then MO and CRAWFORD, but I’ll root for the lion in my pride, MO.
Thinking of it, its pride that keeps any of us in this sport. Its my pride that keeps me going,
Its pride that gets me up in the morning on cold day to train
Its my pride that gives me the beleave that I will come back, its pride that does not let me accept what people say, or think.
If your going through hard times, things are tough, remember who you are, what you have done, and never loose pride in what you do.
I may not love it anymore, but pride stops me from going out like this.
• Ato Boldon was the first sprinter to have a average time of sub-10 in 1998, no sprinter had did this before
• Ato Boldon has ran 9.86 on four different occasions.
• Ato Boldon has run 9.8xx 100M, 8TIMES!.
• Ato Boldon and Maurice Greene are the most prolific 9.8xx second 100m sprinters in History.
• Only Two athletes in History have run One day sub10/sub20 Double. It has happened 6TIMES, Ato Boldon owns 5 OF THEM DOUBLES. And the fastest of all-time.
• 28 sub-10 100m runs.
The One Day Sub10/Sub20 Double
-
Calvin Smith (USA) - August 24, 1983, Zurich
9.97 (1st, +1.6) and 19.99 (1st, +0.6) -
Ato Boldon (TRI) - July 3, 1996, Lausanne
9.94 (3rd, -0.4) and 19.80 (1st, -0.9) -
Boldon - July 7, 1997, Stockholm
9.95 (1st, +0.6) and 19.82 (1st, +1.6) -
Boldon - July 13, 1997, Stuttgart
9.90 (1st, ±0.0) and 19.77 (1st, +0.7) -
Boldon - June 17, 1998, Athens
9.86 (1st, -0.4) and 19.88 (1st, -0.4) -
Boldon - June 16, 1999, Athens
9.97 (1st, -0.1), 9.86 (2nd, +0.1) and 19.86 (1st, +0.4)
• Only Carl Lewis and Ato Boldon have both reached, the 100m and 200m Olympic finals and medaled, in two consecutive Olympics. (Ato Boldon in 1996 and 2000)
• Ato Boldon was the fastest Caribbean 100m sprinter of all-time until Asafa Powell ran 9.85sec in ostrava Grand prix 2004.
• Ato Boldon is still the Caribbean 200m record holder, and second fastest 200m sprinter in the commonwealth behind Franky Fredricks 19.68sec.
• Ato Boldon holds the commonwealth Games record 9.88sec 1998.
• Ato Boldon has the fastest quarter-final in history of 9.87sec 1997 world championships. Maurice Greene in second place in 9.90.
Afew Ato Boldon Videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP34l0ocHEU (First ever sub-10) by the biggest margin of all-time 9.93sec.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xhCe11Q53A (Ato Boldon 1998 fastest man in the world).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2vct4Stits (Prime Time Ato Boldon)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=celnTedKAb4 (Ato Boldon and Maurice an’t never scared)
thank you