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Friday, May 16, 2025

Dis­tin­guished Gen­tle­man

Switching lanes

by

20101024

Up un­til the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Com­mon­wealth Games in Del­hi, In­dia, Ato Boldon's name was still be­ing ut­tered, as track and field pun­dits rem­i­nisced about the glo­ry days when he best­ed Namib­ia's Frankie Fred­er­icks and Bar­ba­dos's Obadele Thomp­son to a record-break­ing 9.88 sec­onds in the 100m event. In his hey­day, Boldon was an un­de­ni­able force, bring­ing glo­ry to Trinidad and To­ba­go as he clocked record sub-10s and bagged pre­cious hard­ware at the Olympics, Com­mon­wealth Games and World Cham­pi­onships. Re­tired since 2004, the now 36-year-old is en­joy­ing a new chap­ter in his life as a broad­cast­er, busi­ness­man and de­vot­ed fa­ther. He may be a lit­tle gray­er but Boldon is still sprint­ing to­ward per­son­al suc­cess. Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips spoke to this month's Dis­tin­guished Gen­tle­man.

DG: What are you up to these days Ato?

AB: I have two shows that I am work­ing on bring­ing to tele­vi­sion next year. One is a re­al­i­ty show called The Move. You can check it out on Watchthe­move.com. The oth­er is a mag­a­zine type show. Both cen­tre on track and field. I am al­so in­volved in the oil in­dus­try. I am the co-own­er of En­ergex Cor­po­ra­tion. We work with en­er­gy sup­pli­ers, end users and gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

DG: From track and field to oil?

AB: My busi­ness part­ner got me in­volved. I don't like to be in things every­one is in­volved in and this is not the kind of thing you see ath­letes do­ing.

DG: But you are still in­volved with track and field...

AB: I am still very in­volved, my re­al pas­sion is still track and field and my day job is track and field broad­cast­ing. I have con­quered the US track and field broad­cast mar­ket with CBS, ES­PN, NBC, Uni­ver­sal Sports and every ma­jor net­work in the US.

DG: Do you ever miss run­ning?

AB: I do not, maybe I would have if I felt like I had left cer­tain things un­done. I had a Hall of Fame ca­reer, I left a good lega­cy and I am still in­volved with peo­ple like Richard Thomp­son. I still get to go to all the meets and watch the best events and be a part of his­to­ry; it's my voice record­ing his­to­ry. I don't miss the com­pet­ing.

DG: How do you feel about the in­ter­na­tion­al tal­ent on the tracks to­day?

AB: I feel blessed to be in the same era, in the booth, while we have a Us­ain Bolt with a once in a life­time sort of tal­ent.

DG: And the tal­ent com­ing out of Trinidad and To­ba­go?

AB: I en­joy watch­ing the fact that when it was me, it was just me and since my time we have seen Bovell in swim­ming, field events have come a long way, women have done a lot bet­ter. My track and field job was to leave it bet­ter than I found it. Are we where I think we should be? No, and we have strides to make.

DG: Let's talk about your per­son­al life, what's go­ing on there?

AB: The good thing is be­cause I am not a na­tion­al ath­lete I have on pur­pose kept my per­son­al life pri­vate. But I am in a re­la­tion­ship and I have two daugh­ters aged 18 and three.

DG: That's a big gap be­tween them. How does that feel to be rais­ing two chil­dren so far apart in ages?

AB: It's like two dif­fer­ent lives. When Bri came, I was 18 and start­ing my ca­reer but when Lea came around I was done with my ca­reer and want­i­ng an­oth­er child. I am a lot more sta­ble now. Bri missed out on me be­ing around the way I am now. Now I get to be around but we have a very good re­la­tion­ship. My re­gret was that she did not get a lot of me.

DG: What's the most im­por­tant les­son you are teach­ing your girls?

AB: I would like to think it's lead­ing by ex­am­ple when it comes to choos­ing a pro­fes­sion. When I was chas­ing my dream in track and field, very few thought it was a cred­i­ble ca­reer choice. I think you should pur­sue your dream. The les­son is don't be lim­it­ed by oth­er peo­ple's ex­pec­ta­tions of you.

DG: Do you con­sid­er your­self to be a dis­tin­guished gen­tle­man?

AB: Yeah. I have grey hair now, I got grey in my late 20s and I get teased about it but this is how I look now.

DG: How have you man­aged to avoid the pub­lic dra­mas that usu­al­ly pur­sue high pro­file ath­letes?

AB: I have al­ways had a good team around me in terms of friends, in terms of man­age­ment and be­cause I had that, they un­der­stood the pit­falls of pub­lic life, par­tic­u­lar­ly in T&T. When I was an ac­tive ath­lete there was a lim­it to how long I could stay in T&T, it was 10 days. When peo­ple ask for my ad­vice I tell them you have to be aware every time you are in a pub­lic sit­u­a­tion be­cause you nev­er ever know.

DG: Any last words?

AB: I just did a deal to bring a new prod­uct, a health drink prod­uct, to T&T. We are launch­ing it for Car­ni­val, it's called Vem­ma. Maybe it's my Caribbean her­itage but I am al­ways look­ing for some­thing that is ex­cit­ing that I could get in­volved in.


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