The four-time Olympic medallist explained why McKenzie Long was excluded from the Sprint docuseries despite being filmed throughout the build up to the Paris Olympics.
Trinidadian sprint legend Ato Boldon has explained why American sprinter McKenzie Long was excluded from Netflix’s Sprint docuseries.
The four-time Olympic medallist revealed that first of all, McKenzie Long was not a medal prospect at the Paris Olympic Games, hence she would come out as a person of very low interest.
He defended the decision to exclude her by insisting that the major part of the show was also about commercialising hence needing a lot of personalities, including the likes of Noah Lyles, Kishane Thompson and Gabby Thomas.
Ato Boldon further pointed out that as the behind-the-scenes crew, the organisers had to go with whom they thought would bring them profits by making the show interesting to watch and according to him, McKenzie Long was nowhere close to that.
“I think you guys have to understand sometimes, and I get that criticism too but we are a television show and we don’t have the time to show you everything and we’ll only go with who we think is going to factor. You may not like but this is an American television,” Ato Boldon said on his Instagram live.
“You have to cut her because she didn’t do anything at the Games, McKenzie just started. How are you going to put McKenzie Long, the thing about the Sprint series is that they were kind of probably trying to figure out to follow the people who were going to be on the podium.”
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He gave her fans hopes by explaining that if there would be another series, then she would certainly be a part of it.
The 1997 world 200m champion further revealed that no other athlete would be removed from the show for the sake of McKenzie Long and that was the harsh reality.
“If there’s going to be another sprint series, then McKenzie would get her turn. I think the Sprint series should have been more than four damn episodes but that’s just me,” he added.
“You’re not taking out Gabby or Noah cause they won, you’re not taking out Kishane cause he got silver by the narrowest margin ever so who exactly are you going to take out that did not factor in the Olympic Games?”
McKenzie Long had also aired out her frustrations in a post on X (Twitter), slamming the producers of the show for following her around with cameras all through her collegiate competitions and later being told that she would not be featured.
“It’s sad we put ourselves outside our comfort zone for this series, yet our stories can’t be told,” she said.
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At the Paris Olympic Games, Long made the final of the women’s 200m but faded to a seventh-place finish. Gabby Thomas claimed top honours in the race as Julien Alfred and Brittany Brown finished second and third respectively.
