http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/sports/olympics/23sandomir.html?_r=1&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=sloginArticle Tools Sponsored By
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: August 22, 2008
Ato Boldon, the NBC track analyst, was not alone when he faulted Usain Bolt for celebrating before the end of his gold-medal-winning, world-record 100-meter sprint.
“But right now I’m the most hated man in the Caribbean,” he said by telephone from Beijing on Friday morning. “I did an interview with Bob Costas and I said that I celebrated with the best of them, but I just wanted to see Bolt go through the line.”
He said his words outraged track fans in Jamaica, Bolt’s homeland, coming as they did from a former track star from Trinidad and Tobago. “Here I was, a Trinidadian on an American network criticizing their most famous son. A day later, Frankie Fredericks said the same thing and the I.O.C. said the same thing. But it was too late.”
In his homeland, people were not thrilled by his remarks or that he uses what he calls his “fake Yankee accent” on NBC.
“I can’t win with my people,” he said. “I called Bolt the athlete of the Games, meaning track and field. He hasn’t done what Phelps did.”
Boldon, 34, has emerged as one of NBC’s best analysts, a blend of athletic smarts (he won one silver and three bronze medals in the 100 and 200 meters at the 1996 and 2000 Games), charisma, precise analysis and brashness — his Web site, atoboldon.com, demonstrates no lack of self-esteem.
And he knows what he does not know. To call the men’s 400-meter hurdles, he consulted with Kevin Young, the world-record holder, who correctly predicted that Angelo Taylor would win. To prepare for the 110-meter hurdles, he exchanged e-mail messages with Allen Johnson, who won the Olympic gold medal in Atlanta.
“I’m into details because I’m obsessive-compulsive,” he said. “But with regard to lanes, it’s one of the nuances of the sport that I can share. If you’re watching the 200, there’s a reason why the guy in Lane 2 has no chance, or the woman in Lane 9 in the 200 has to run like a bat out of hell to win.”
Craig Silver, the CBS producer who hired him to call the N.C.A.A. championships in 2005, said: “He’s very astute, very bright, and does his homework. He’s not just saying stuff. We’re both track geeks, so we’re always texting each other about what’s happening.”
For nongeeks, Boldon appears to have emerged from nowhere to appear on NBC, partly because track is a TV orphan in America, and was before the sport’s drug scandals.
He has worked for the BBC and Fox Sports, and started with NBC in 2007. Like other track commentators, he is a free agent. In June, he called the Reebok Grand Prix on CBS from Randalls Island (on tape delay from the previous day). There, Bolt set his previous 100-meter world record, of 9.72, in only his fifth attempt at that distance.
“I never thought this was something I would do when I retired,” he said. “Back in 1995, my ex-wife, just from being around me and listening to me talk about sports, said TV would be my future. I said, ‘No way.’ ” About a decade later, Boldon saw Peter Diamond, an NBC Olympics senior vice president, and said that he told him, “You have to hire me.”
Boldon leaves no room to doubt his admiration for Bolt.
“There’s nothing like Bolt,” he said. “Come on, he could be the starting point guard on the Redeem team. That’s why the track and field has such adulation for him.”
Fans are ultrasensitive to slights to their heroes, however minor. When Bolt crossed the line, Boldon praised his 100-meter time of 9.69. “The 100 meters is run in a straight line, but he just turned the corner and the line starts behind him,” he said. (Nice!)
On replay, he said: “Once his superior top-end speed comes out, he leads the world and it’s not even close.” (Nicer!) Then, he said that if Bolt had not started his happy dance 15 meters before the end, his time might have been 9.59. (Praise, if taken the right way.)
The 9.59 was not a precise calculation but one based on experience.
“From years of shutting down early myself, I saw how far back he started to decelerate,” he said. “He really started at about 78 meters and there was a massive deceleration with 12 meters left. So it’s an estimate of how much he gave back.”
He could not have offended Jamaicans — or Trinidadians — with his assessment of Bolt’s gold-medal win in the 200 meters in just 19.30 seconds. “The record I thought would be the record when I died is history,” he said. (Were Jamaicans listening?)
Somehow Boldon has a blind spot: performance-enhancing drugs.
“I was never suspicious, even at the height of the Balco stuff,” he said. “My teammate, Inger Miller, who ran against Marion Jones, accused her of doing all sorts of things, but I said, ‘No, she’s a prodigy.’ I’m an eternal optimist on my sport, but that’s souring a bit now. I don’t want to look at someone and say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s one.’ ”
