THE SECRETS OF THEIR SUCCESS

Fast Facts:

Pursuit: Four-time Olympic medal winner, World Champion, IAAF Ambassador, NBC Broadcaster etc..

Definition of success: “Success is when someone pays you well to do something you’d do for free.”

Sunday 12^th August 2001. Edmonton, Canada: arena for the IAAF World Championships. At a few minutes after 5pm sprinters from eight nations settle into their starting blocks for the 4×100 metre relay. USA are favourites, and although they will subsequently be disqualified, for the race itself the team lives up to the expectations placed upon them. By the second leg they look to have the lead, and they will go on to win, but just over Bernard Williams’s shoulder there’s a flash of red in lane five. BBC commentator Brendan Foster has spotted him: “Ato Boldon, flying along for Trinidad”. By the final leg USA’s Tim Montgomery has extended too great a lead to be threatened by any of his competitors. There’s a surprise second place finish for South Africa, but right on their shoulders is another athlete in red: Trinidad and Tobago’s Darrel Brown. They will later be bumped up to silver following the forfeit of team USA’s medal after Montgomery’s drug violation, but in either standing, the die was cast for the twin islands in the Lesser Antilles.

If you watch track and field, even as an armchair fan like me, you’ll know about the ones in red. The nation who can never be ruled out in a sprint. Trinidad and Tobago are perennially in the running for a medal, and from a relay perspective, it started right there in Edmonton – with a team of four whose average age was just 20. Here today is the man who carried the weight of experience into that young team, running second leg, fresh from bronze in the 100m final at the same competition. He’s a four-time Olympic medal winner, an accolade that in individual sprint terms has been equalled only by Usain Bolt, Frankie Fredericks and Carl Lewis. I could go on for pages about his achievements, but instead I’ll hand over to the man himself – Broadcaster, Olympian, World Champion: Ato Boldon.

“Since 2005 I have been a broadcaster in the USA for track and field on national television,” Ato explains when I ask him for a quick summary of his current role in sport. “From 2005-2009 I did it at the college level, and since 2007 I’ve also been on air for professional meets, including the Olympics and World Championships. Since 2013, I have also been a Global Ambassador for the IAAF, the world governing body of track and field, and I created and produced the web-show IAAF Inside Athletics, which is about to start its third season.”

Athletics, you might say, is in the blood. Even so, track and field wasn’t Ato’s first calling.

“I was probably never supposed to be a sprinter. I was playing football, doing quite well in high school when I was discovered in New York. By 18, I was world junior champion in two events and an Olympian, and by 21 I had become the youngest person to medal in a world championship 100m final, so my path was set from there away from football, to athletics.”

Nowadays you’ll find Ato off the track and out of the red lycra, but that doesn’t mean he’s not on the sidelines in some guise or other. Broadcast analyst for ESPN and NBC, speed training, public speaking – all within the sphere of track and field athletics. So what’s his regime these days?

“I like routine,” he asserts, “so I’m happiest when I can stick to one, but these days I go to my office about noon and it’s a mix of research, film study, preparing for whatever speaking engagement or broadcast I have coming up next, and helping athletes who I work with get faster. I still find some time in the day to work out, which serves two purposes – it keeps me in shape so I can look my best for television, and it also reminds me how hard this sport I cover is to train for.”

And since we’re on the subject of reminiscence, I ask Ato about his proudest moment as an athlete.

“My most treasured achievement is what we did as a team at the world championships in 2001, because it was so unexpected. I skipped the 200m after getting 3rd in the 100m final to focus on the 4×100 relay, an event in which Trinidad and Tobago had never won any medals of any kind. With a 16 year-old anchor, a 17 year-old and a 19 year-old, we won the silver medal, and that was the genesis for all the relay success at World and Olympic level the country has had since. Trinidad and Tobago are now the third fastest country ever and have won medals in two Olympics and three world championships and it’s in part because of what was started in 2001.”

And Ato has been diligently applying himself to one endeavour or another ever since.

“I work as hard as I need to. When I am getting ready for a big event, I’m locked in my office working. It’s not always like that – sometimes I’m doing very little. Hard work is never something I am afraid of or shy away from. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”

The response you’d expect, I think, from a World Champion. Needless to say, there’s nothing standard about Ato’s life and achievements; he might have mentioned a penchant for routine, but here we must employ the indirect article: it’s about a routine, not the routine.

“I’ve never had a nine to five job, and never will,” he asserts. “I do like routine, but the best thing about my jobs is that the view never stays the same. Travel to different cities, emerging athletes, different meets and of course, broadcasts make for an ever-changing landscape. Not hard to be excited when there is always something new on my horizon.”

And if world travel and an ever-changing horizon is right up your alley, you’ll probably want to know Ato Boldon’s advice. So here it is, just for you:

“When you are pursuing your dreams, it’s easy to think that things will happen overnight or even soon – or that a major setback is somehow the end, or irreversible. There isn’t a single successful person who didn’t fall flat, numerous times. When you’re really young you don’t know that yet. Older folks look back and realize their stumbles and falls are why they were able to climb the mountain. If you expect the pitfalls and know they are only there to strengthen you, it’s easier to keep going.”

My thanks To Ato Boldon for the insight into his life and for his advice on success and achievement. You can find Ato at his website: www.atoboldon.com and follow him on Twitter @AtoBoldon 

Finally, if you’re an athlete (armchair varieties included) you must take a look at Ato’s web series IAAF Inside Athletics for a fascinating look at the world of athletics, featuring analysis of everything track and field, from world record holders to patterns of dominance.