On May 23, NBC Sports track and field analyst Ato Boldon asked the question on Twitter: In my career, I beat Maurice Greene, Michael Johnson and Usain Bolt. Who am I?
Answer: John Capel, who for the last four years has been the track and field coach at Springstead High School in Spring Hill, Fla.
“I’m coaching like I’m trying to send every kid I coach to the Olympic Games,” he joked by phone last week. Capel, 41, is nine years removed from the last races of a career that has to be one of the most unlikely in sprint history.
Capel ran track and played wide receiver at the University of Florida in 1998 and 1999. He withdrew from Florida in spring 2000 to focus on the Sydney Games.
In the most anticipated showdown of the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials — Greene vs. Johnson in the 200m final — Capel won after the two headliners pulled up with injuries. At the Olympics, Capel was the favorite but flinched in the blocks just before the gun — a false start wasn’t called — was slowest out of the blocks by .14 of a second and ended up last. Devastated, Capel quit track and focused on football. He didn’t return to Steve Spurrier‘s Gators — what he calls his biggest regret — but instead went to the 2001 NFL Combine.
There, he tested positive for marijuana. The Chicago Bears still drafted him in the seventh round, but a month later he was arrested on a marijuana-possession charge. Capel was cut before the season, then cut by the Kansas City Chiefs before the 2002 season, never playing an NFL regular-season game.
Capel returned to track for the 2003 season, urged by Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil. Capel was broke, borrowing $20 to pay for gas on his trip from his hometown of Brooksville to Gainesville as his college track coach, Mike Holloway, took him back. After not racing at all in 2001 and 2002, he won the 2003 World title in the 200m.
Then came 2004. Capel had a disappointing Olympic Trials, finishing fifth in the 100m and sixth in the 200m. He was put on the Olympic team as part of the 4x100m pool.
Capel rebounded to take bronze in the 200m at the 2005 World Championships — this is where he beat an 18-year-old Bolt in the quarterfinals, semifinals and final (where Bolt pulled up with a reported leg injury and slowed to finish in last place).
In 2006, Capel tested positive for marijuana again and was banned two years. He made it back for the 2008 Olympic Trials, but didn’t make a final. His athletic career was done.
Life got better in 2016. That’s when Capel spoke with Springstead High athletic director Dustin Kupcik at a middle-school football game. Kupcik was looking for a track coach. Capel applied.
(NBC sports)