Ato Boldon

Ato Jabari Boldon (born 30 December 1973) is a Trinidadian former track and field athlete, politician, and four-time Olympic medal winner.

In December 1989, as a soccer player at Jamaica High School in Queens, New York City, head track and field coach Joe Trupiano noticed his sprinting abilities during a soccer practice session.

In his first track season at age 16, Boldon finished with 21.20 seconds in the 200 metres and 48.40 seconds in the 400 metres, recording a double win at the Queens County Championships in 1990, and earning MVP honours.

After transferring for his final year from Jamaica High to Piedmont Hills High School in San Jose, California, Boldon was selected to the San Jose Mercury News' Santa Clara all-county soccer team.

He also continued to sprint, placing third in the 200 m at the CIF California State Meet in 1991.

Athletics became his primary focus and he won the Junior Olympic Title that summer in Durham, North Carolina, in 200 m.

At 18, Boldon represented Trinidad and Tobago at 100 metres and 200 m in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona but did not qualify in the first round of either event.

Boldon returned to the junior circuit, winning the 100 m and 200 m titles at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Athletics in Seoul, South Korea to become the first double sprint champion in World Junior Championships history.

Boldon 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. In 1996, he secured an NCAA 100 m Championship in Eugene, Oregon in the final race of his collegiate career, setting an NCAA meet record of 9.92.

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 at 21 years of age to win a medal in that event.

Boldon also held the collegiate 100 m record with 9.90 s from 1996 until it was broken by Travis Padgett, who ran 9.89s, in 2008.

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 the 200 m at the World Championships in Athens, Greece; his country's first world title in the Athletics World Championships.

This made him one of only a few male sprinters to win both a World Junior and World Senior title.

The following year saw Boldon reaching the peak of his career, setting a new personal best and national record of 9.86 s in the 100 m at the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, California on 19 April and repeating the feat in Athens on 17 June.

He picked up gold in the 100 m at the 1998 Commonwealth Games held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, setting a record time of 9.88 s, beating Namibia's Frankie Fredericks (9.96 s) and Barbados' Obadele Thompson (10.00 s).

The Commonwealth Games 100 m record remains unbroken.

In 1999, Boldon ran 9.86 s twice in the 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.

At the 1999 World Championships in Seville, Spain, Boldon could not compete due to a serious injury.

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

This win made him the most successful individual Olympic medallist from Trinidad and Tobago with four Olympic medals.

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 István 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 100 m with 9.98 s, and then ran the second leg of his country's 4 x 100-metre relay, finishing third in the finals.

This was Trinidad and Tobago's first 4 x 100 m relay medal in either World or Olympic competition and Boldon states that making national history with this team of young men (the average age of his teammates was 19) was his greatest accomplishment in his career.

The colours of his 2001 World Championship medals would change in 2005 as both his placings were improved – he received bronze in the 100 m and the bronze relay medals were upgraded to silver after all the times and performances of the American sprinter Tim Montgomery (who was second in the 100 m and won the 4 x 100 m with the US team) were nullified due to serious doping violations.

That brought Boldon's career total to four World Championship medals, to match his four Olympic medals.

Boldon was seriously injured in a head-on crash with a drunk driver in Barataria, Trinidad and Tobago, in July 2002, and never again ran sub-ten seconds in the 100 m or sub-twenty seconds for 200 m, something he had done on 37 separate occasions prior to 2002.

In 2004 at the Athens Olympic Games, he failed to advance out of the first round of the 100 m heats but captained his country's 4 x 100 m relay team to their first-ever Olympic final, where they finished seventh.

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 100 m performances in history with 28, behind former training partner Maurice Greene, who has 52, and Jamaica's former 100 m World Record holder Asafa Powell, who leads with 97.

After retiring from his track career, Boldon was an Opposition Senator in the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament, representing the United National Congress from 2006–2007.

Boldon works as an NBC Sports television broadcast analyst for track and field.

Boldon was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago to a Jamaican mother, and Trinidadian father, Hope and Guy Boldon.

He attended Fatima College (Secondary School) in Trinidad before leaving for the United States at age fourteen.

In 2006, a judge in Trinidad found that Boldon was not at fault in that accident, and he was paid substantial damages as a result.

That accident left Boldon with a serious hip injury, and he was a shadow of his former self as a sprinter.

On 20 April 2008 The Observer published the contents of a letter believed to be by Boldon to John Smith, his former coach, accusing Smith, Maurice Greene of betraying him by obtaining banned drugs without his knowledge, lying about Greene competing without drugs and damaging his own career.

But for a quote on the matter to HellenicAthletes.com, a website he wrote for at the time, Boldon has had no further official comment.

He holds the Trinidad and Tobago national record in the 50, 60 and 200 metres events with times of 5.64, 6.49 and 19.77 seconds respectively, and also the Commonwealth Games record in the 100 m. He also held the 100m national record at 9.86s, having run it four times until Richard Thompson ran 9.85s on 13 August 2011.

Ngonidzashe Makusha later equalled this record at the 2011 NCAA Championships in Des Moines, Iowa