For­mer Olympic and Worlds medal­list Ato Boldon be­lieves for­mer young sprint­ing sen­sa­tion Khal­i­fa St Fort will re­turn to com­pet­i­tive ac­tion. He al­so be­lieves coach­es and ath­letes alike have to ac­cept blame for the state of ath­let­ics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and hopes the Gov­ern­ment can es­tab­lish an in­de­pen­dent an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion in this coun­try.

“The younger ath­letes, es­pe­cial­ly in the sprint events, have not come for­ward. Can you imag­ine that for the first time since 1991, we have not had an in­di­vid­ual qual­i­fy for the 100 me­tres? That says a lot and we have to note that sig­nif­i­cance,” Boldon said on the IS­ports Sat­ur­day pro­gramme on I95.5FM with host An­dre Er­rol Bap­tiste over the week­end.

“Our coun­try, I have been told by the IAAF that T&T has the most qual­i­fied coach­es per capi­ta but we are not pro­duc­ing the ath­letes.”

Boldon made the com­ment as he sought to clear up a mis­un­der­stand­ing about a com­ment he made last year when he said “some women were lane fillers.”

“I made that com­ment to re­late to per­sons who were be­ing se­lect­ed, it ap­peared, ahead of Khal­i­fa St Fort, one of the fastest young women in the world, by the NAAA ahead of the Com­mon­wealth Games in 2018.

“And for some rea­son, I be­lieve per­sons told Michelle (Lee Ahye) that I was re­fer­ring to her. But I would nev­er do that and I can tell you on my chil­dren that Michelle, who has been our best sprint­er and com­pet­ing at the high­est lev­el for many years, could nev­er be con­sid­ered such. But it ap­pears that was said to her so let me clear this up here, I would nev­er call Michelle a lane filler.”

On the news ear­li­er this year that St Fort had part­ed ways with Boldon, he con­firmed this was true.

“Yes, what hap­pened is that Khal­i­fa came to me and said she want­ed some time off at this time and I told her okay, but we will go for­ward a cer­tain way and the next thing I saw was that she was do­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent and I felt then that I had to pub­licly part ways with her,” he said.

“Be­cause as I told her, I had vouched for her with var­i­ous spon­sors in Trinidad and I could not just let this hap­pen, as I have giv­en my as­sur­ances. The on­ly time I knew things got bad was when Khal­i­fa took her­self out of the What­sApp group we have and then she un­fol­lowed Bri­ana Williams from In­sta­gram and that is a big thing in those young peo­ple cir­cles and the fact that Bri­ana wor­shipped her, made it even fur­ther sig­nif­i­cant.”

Boldon ad­mit­ted that he has not spo­ken with St Fort since.

“I know many said it was be­cause I was ne­glect­ing Khal­i­fa in favour of Bri­ana but that is not true, as I ac­tu­al­ly was giv­ing Khal­i­fa the most at­ten­tion at this time.”

On whether he ex­pects St Fort to re­turn, he said, “No, hon­est­ly no, I do not at this time.”

He did, how­ev­er, have some ad­vice for lo­cal sprint­ers Jereem Richards, whom he be­lieves needs to change his style to medal in the Tokyo Olympics next year and Kyle Greaux adding to his regime.

“Jereem has to change his tem­plate. He can­not get slow starts and give four or five run­ners a big lead com­ing off the turn, I think he has re­gressed and he has to get go­ing now,” Boldon said.

“As for Kyle, I was im­pressed with him and ac­tu­al­ly had him in a medal chance but now I heard he was in­jured. I think he should con­sid­er be­ing a part of the 4x400 me­tres re­lay team. I use to do the an­chor and once you can run sub-20 in the 200 me­tres it would be a good idea for him.”

Asked if he would be in­ter­est­ed in coach­ing some oth­er T&T ath­letes, Boldon, who coached Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste and Richard Thomp­son for a short while in 2015/2016, not­ed: “Af­ter the ex­pe­ri­ences with both Kel­ly and Richard, who I still talk with very reg­u­lar­ly, it is that when a pro­fes­sion­al comes to you, I have re­alised that many times they are set in their ways and how they are ac­cus­tomed and then I am set in my ways and ac­cus­tomed to things be­ing done my way, so I have to be cau­tious with pros, they have to buy-in to what I want done.”

Boldon al­so be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment needs to en­sure a law is passed for the es­tab­lish­ment of an an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion in this coun­try and it is processed quick­ly.

“Some­times it ap­pears that once one gov­ern­ment does some­thing, the oth­er par­ty that comes in does not fol­low through. We need al­ways to put the ath­letes and our sport­ing peo­ple first,” he said.