media_artricles :: 2016

Boldon relishing coaching role with TT athletes

LEGENDARY TRINIDAD and Tobago sprinter Ato Boldon is relishing his role as coach of a trio of top national runners Kelly- Ann Baptiste, Richard Thompson and Khalifa St Fort.

Boldon works with the trio in Florida, United States.

The 42-year-old Boldon acknowledged in a recent interview, "coaching for me is sort of bitter- sweet.

"Kelly-Ann is my friend, Richard is my friend but, as I found out from my old coach, you cannot be a friend to these athletes all the time because as a coach you have to do things to them and ask things of them and be honest enough of them in a way that sometimes friends can't be with one another.

So it has created the occasional hardships between us.

"It's not always fun and games," Boldon continued. "But (at times) I come to practice and look out at what I have and I say '(not) in a million years would have thought I would have half the women's (4x100-metre relay team), you have Richard who is the person who would have followed you in terms of TT's sprinting'.

"It's mostly good and those are things that gets me up, even though it's not always 100 percent great." Boldon, who also works as a commentator with ESPN and NBC, was asked about how he balances his work with the athletes and his role as an analyst.

"I pulled it off last year, that's before Richard and Kelly-Ann came," stated the 42-year-old quadruple Olympic medallist. "It's going to be more challenging this year. I've actually had to make a big decision very recently as to if I was even going to go back in broadcasting. And I have because they have made it so I can do both.

"So I will, as I did in Beijing (during the 2015 IAAF World Championships in China), I will be running back and forth between the booth and the warm-up track.

But we got results in Beijing last year and I believe that I can certainly contribute to (both).

"Once I set myself a target, I am very hard to get off the set. And I decided last year, when I saw that women's 4x1 that I could contribute to use getting our first women's medal.

"I don't know if it's going to be in the 100 or the 200, or the 4x1," Boldon added. "But I think I have two really good shots in Khalifa and Kelly-Ann."

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