Understanding Sports culture is important to have success – Ato Boldon

IF ANYONE knows what it takes to win and be successful and can offer advice on how it could be done, it’s Trinidad and Tobago’s sprint gem Ato Boldon. 

To date, only Usain Bolt, Frankie Fredericks and Carl Lewis have won as many Olympic individual event sprint medals as Boldon who is now a track and field analyst for ESPN and NBC Sports.
The Trinidadian coped silver in the 100 metres and bronze in the 200 metres at the Sydney Olympic Games (2000) and finished third at the 1996 Olympics over the 100 and 200 metres.
Along with several podium finishes at the Junior and Senior World Championships and an array of victories at the Commonwealth Games during his career, Boldon is one of the world’s most decorated sprinters.
Boldon arrived in Guyana to be part of a Sports Management Workshop, hosted by the Ministry of Sport and the now 40-year-old Olympian believes that such an event is much needed, especially in a country like Guyana.
Despite having several athletes who over the years competed at the Olympics, Guyana’s lone ‘hooray’ on the athletic circuit came at the Commonwealth Games thanks to Aliann Pompey who won 400M gold in Manchester, England in 2002 and placed second in New Delhi India in 2010.
Boldon said: “There has to be a change and the first thing that has to change is the culture. If you don’t have a culture of sport then young people don’t have an incentive to get involved.
“If you look at the World Cup, Brazil play a certain way and that’s because their culture involves playing football a certain way and that is what has to happen in Guyana.
“Until you establish a culture of sport being important and sport being something you can aspire too, then none of the other plans will work.”
Through the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, the Government of Guyana has built this country’s first synthetic track and has also been spending millions on infrastructural development.
However, Boldon believes that infrastructural development is just one-half of the component needed to really take sports in Guyana to the next level, but the most important of them, and oftentimes neglected, is the investment in the country’s human resource.
Boldon) noted, “You can build all of the stadiums and everything else, but nothing will happen because it starts from culture and it starts from the young people.”
Written By Rawle Toney

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