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On
Friday September 23, 2005, international sprinter and Olympic
medallist Ato Boldon addressed Forms Four and Six students
of Fyzabad Anglican Secondary School and Holy Faith Convent,
Penal.
Ato
Boldon
Photo:
Sookdeo Baney
Why
is it important that your reputation remains intact? Let
me give you a good example. Many of you may have read in
the newspaper some time ago about what was happening with
many track and field athletes on the world stage, many of
whom are Americans. Anyone knows who Marion Jones is? Marion
Jones is one of the best female athletes in the world. What
has she been in the news for? Doping. Do you know what doping
is? In Trinidad, we say taking drugs.
It was announced that a lot of Marion Jones’s supporters
and endorsers are separating and distancing themselves from
the Marion Jones’s image. Why are they separating themselves
from the Marion Jones’s image? Because her reputation
was tarnished. I think the only sports that have more drugs
than track and field are cycling and body building. So I’m
in a sport with a lot of drugs, and pressure to perform
the best track times. Many people ask me, “How is it
you always resisted the temptation to go that route?”
It is really very simple. I would have loved for every Trinidadian
and Tobagonian walking the face of this earth to have four
gold medals at this point and I would have loved to have
done it. However, I would not have wanted to have those
four gold medals right now, but have the eyes of the world
thinking T&T is a place where it’s okay to cut
corners. The reputation of myself and my country was a lot
more important to me than any medal and cheating.
At the end of the day, all I have is my reputation which
I have tried to guard as much as I could throughout my career,
and it can now take me a lot further. The world record 100
meters is something that I was striving for, for a very
long time. I look at the man who has it now and he has zero
reputation. Why? He has already testified to a (US) grand
jury that he has the world record but he cheated to get
it, and therefore nothing that he has done before will be
taken seriously. How does that apply to you?
You don’t want at this age or in the future to have
all the things that you have done, all the hard work you
have put in, to be totally wiped away because you made a
wrong decision. Or because you decided that your reputation
was not important enough to guard above all else. Imagine
if you passed every exam with a One, an A, or 100 per cent,
and then when you decide to get your Masters or PhD, you
want to cut a corner or cheat for an exam. How much credibility
do you think would be given to all the work you have done
prior to that exam? Not much.
They are going to look at you and say he wasn’t ever
any good. So, above all, guard your reputation. At what
age do yo think it is okay to begin to dream? I do not think
you are ever too young to begin to dream, and I certainly
don’t believe that you are too old to start to dream.
You are never too old. But I said that to make this point.
It is going to take from each one of you, a confidence,
a drive and a sense of purpose if any of you are going to
make your dream a reality. Now why is that?
If you look outside this school, this is not Hollywood.
The nice clean ending that you get when you go to Movie
Towne and to your movie theatres does not always happen.
Some of the people you see on television that you think
are overnight successes have been working for a long, long,
long time behind the scenes before they got there. So let
me tell you this. People are going to disappoint you. That
is part of life. Some people are jealous of you and are
determined to make sure they talk behind your back. I will
be very honest with you when I tell you that even the people
who you think are supposed to have your back, and the people
who are supposed to be supportive of you are going to disappoint
you.
It is not as if you are going to make the journey on your
own. I am not saying that. But this is what I want you to
understand and remember. The book I am currently
reading,
by Mohammed Ali; I’ll tell you one of the things that
struck me the most. Mohammed Ali is probably one of the
greatest sportsmen of all time, as an athlete. They asked
him, “Mohammed ,you couldn’t possibly have thought
that every time you fought you were going to win”?
He said, “No. But I didn’t let them know that.”
I never let anyone convince me of what I could or could
not do. So when these people who you expect to support you,
when these people get jealous of you, when these people
talk behind your back and try to destroy your dream, discard
your dream, the most important thing you are going to have
is your drive and your confidence.
That’s the most important thing, I can tell you all
about dreaming. Do not think for a second that when I went
to the Boldon family and told them that despite their dream
of me being an engineer, lawyer or whatever it is they had
for me, I wanted to be an athlete. My family had it all
laid out for me, because people have a tendency to see you
how they want to see you in the future. They see you as
having some height and being kind of tal. They think you
should play basketball because that is their concept.
They don’t care if you are seven feet tall and you
want to be an artist. So when I went to my family and I
said, “My dream is I want to be in the Olympic Games.
I want to be an athlete. I want to represent my country,”
most of my family thought I was being ridiculous. Track
and field is not a job. I’m here to tell you that I
worked as hard in track and field as anybody else did in
any other job. But back to my main point. Whatever you do,
do not expect that everybody will support you and say yes
when you lay out your great dream for them. It is not going
to happen. Despite people disappointing you, you have to
know this is what I want for myself, this is what I’m
passionate about.
You don’t want to be 80 years old and say, “You
know what? I really wanted to get into medicine, but due
to pressure from person X, Y, or Z, I went into something
else and I spent the rest of my life being unhappy. “
When you lay out your dreams, if you trust someone enough
to lay out your dreams before them, be guarded. Let me see
by a show of hands how many people want at the end of their
life to say they have made a difference in their country.
How many people want to say at the end of their lives that
they have made a difference in their world?
I’m saying this to you today, because I would like
to see a change throughout our small island. For the most
part, most of the adults, myself included, are so set in
our ways that it is a lot harder for us to change. So, we
have to depend on you to change things. Trinidad and Tobago
can be a better place, not by building more skyscrapers
or jails and more police and all of that, but it is going
to come in the difference in your thinking.
We have to stop being an I, me, mine society. We have to
start thinking about the other person just a little bit
more every day. At the end of the day if you have four PhD's,
all the certificates in the world, and you do nothing with
it to help the generation coming after you, to help your
fellow man, you have been a complete failure.
I believe that each of us is going to be judged on what
we did for other people. I would love to say I have ten
Olympic medals, but at the end of the day the medal is mostly
for me. I would be so much happier if one of you, 10, 15
years from now, long after everyone forgot about what I
said in your school, say: “You know what? Ato came
to me and shared what he felt with me, and I made up my
mind that day that I was going to make sure to be the greatest
I could be. And not only that, when I’m walking through
that door of greatness, I want to make sure I pull other
people up along with me.
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