MOSCOW, Russia – The IAAF Ambassadors Press Conference, marking 30 years of the IAAF World Championships, featured two IAAF Ambassadors, 1997 World 400m Hurdles champion Stephane Diagana and 1997 World 200m champion Ato Boldon. Recently-crowned World Pole Vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva was also there as a guest on Thursday, August 15.
A montage of the 1997 edition was shown before the conference got underway, but afterwards Boldon surprisingly said that despite it being his only World title, it was not his fondest memory.
“That meet was not as satisfying as you’d imagine it would be for a World title,” he said. “Really I was trying to redeem myself for having ruined the 100m in which I was fifth. It’s an okay memory, just not one of my top ones. Had I not won, people back home would not have let me back into the country!”
When asked what is his favourite memory, Boldon said the 1998 Commonwealth Games where he won gold in a time of 9.88.
“That evening at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Frankie Fredericks and I really brought the house down,” he said. “It’s not often in my career when I’d go to a championships and I was the featured athlete. It was also my best performance in a high-pressure final.
“Of course, at the end of the day, my country only has one World champion – maybe by the end of today it will be two, with Jehue Gordon in the 400m Hurdles – but for now we only have one World champion, so I’m very proud that I was the first; but my memory of that race was that it was simply more of a relief that I won.”
