Humbled Boldon Wins 200

ATHENS —  In less than 10 seconds last Sunday, Ato Boldon went from The Future of the 100-Meter Sprint to someone who gets quoted a lot talking about Maurice Greene.

Boldon finished fifth in the race that promoted his good friend and training partner to the rank of World’s Fastest Human, the title Boldon loudly and repeatedly had predicted would be his.

Gone were the gold medal, the world record, the brash “9.7” forecast and all of the attendant perks that come with winning a 100-meter world championship.

“It was tough,” Boldon says, “because, you know, Maurice is like two doors down [the hotel hallway] from me, and he got more flowers and champagne than most brides.”

Boldon was left with the 200 meters, a sort of trumped-up consolation prize for the 100-meter also-rans. John Drummond, another Boldon running mate and a 200-meter specialist by necessity rather than choice, calls it “the bastard event of track and field.”

Friday at the IAAF World Championships, Boldon took it and ran with it. The result was not an extraordinarily fast 200 meters--Boldon called it “probably my worst technical race of the year”--but it was a winning 200 meters.

And for Boldon, whose post-UCLA career was starting to look like the next Bronze Age, that qualified as an unqualified breakthrough.

Running for his native country of Trinidad and Tobago, Boldon won the 200-meter final in 20.04 seconds, holding off 1993 world champion Frankie Fredericks of Namibia (20.23) and Claudinei Da Silva of Brazil (20.26) down the straightaway.

Drummond, running from the inside lane, stayed abreast of Boldon and Fredericks for 170 meters before fading badly and finishing seventh at 20.44.

It is the first gold medal in a major international meet for Boldon, whose resume at these things had carried the working title “I Am Third.”

Third at 100 meters in the 1995 World Championships.

Third at 100 meters in the 1996 Olympics.

Third at 200 meters in the 1996 Olympics.

“Do I have final-itis?” Boldon asked his coach, John Smith, after cramping up in Sunday’s 100-meter finish, wincing to a fifth-place finish in 10.02 seconds.

It was beginning to look that way after Boldon had flirted with the world record in the 100-meter quarterfinals, running 9.87, before breaking down in the final.

“After the 100, all of a sudden it was, like, ‘You can’t win the big one,’ ” Boldon said.

He called the 200 final “a mental check. I said, ‘OK, you’ve talked a lot about being the future of track and field and you want to be this great star eventually. Now it’s time to do something.’ ”

After cramping up in the 100-meter final, Boldon’s legs had to endure three grueling 200-meter preliminary heats--including the quarterfinals and semifinals in the same group with Fredericks and Drummond.

“I’d like to thank the computer that put Frankie, me and Jon Drummond together in three successive rounds,” Boldon said sarcastically. “Because you see what the result is.”

Boldon’s winning time of 20.04 was the slowest at the World Championships since Calvin Smith’s 20.16 in 1987, true. But if the computer conspired against him, Boldon drew a substantial break when world-record holder Michael Johnson, the defending 200-meter champion, announced he would compete in only the 400-meter sprint in Athens.

Fredericks, the old man in this field at 29, figured he had more reason to gripe about the computer pairings than Boldon, six years his junior.

“Obviously, when they put us together in the second and third rounds, it was not fair to me, because I think I am the older one,” Fredericks said, grinning at Boldon. “When I was quite young, I could do this day in and day out. No more.”

Boldon seemed much older than 23 in the interview room, subdued, almost downcast, far removed from his usual ricocheting-off-walls demeanor.

“I have been humbled by this entire World Championships experience,” Boldon explained. “Because when you’re training and you’re getting ready for a race, you have all the adrenaline in the world. And you have your plans. And your plan is to come here and run 9.7 and 19.2 or whatever.

“Then you come here and life throws you a curve. And you have to rebound from it. I’m really humbled by the whole experience of winning a world title.”

Winning this one, Boldon said, “was the hardest thing I’ve had to do to date.” And, for once, talking about it was no 9.8 dash through the park, either.