Politi: Wrestler's American Dream knows no borders

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on August 19, 2008 at 7:00 PM, updated August 19, 2008 at 10:59 PM
Henry Cejudo, top, of the U.S. takes down Tomohiro Matsunaga of Japan during the freestyle wresting 55kg gold medal match Tuesday in Beijing. Cejudo won the gold medal.
Wrestler Henry Cejudo is overcome with emotion as he celebrates his victory in 55kg freestyle gold-medal match Tuesday.
BEIJING -- The usher kept telling them to sit down, but they couldn't stop springing from their seats. He threatened to kick them out, but they kept on cheering and dancing and clapping.

Henry Cejudo -- the son of illegal Mexican immigrants; a kid who was so poor he shared running shoes with his brothers; a star wrestler who never slept in his own bed until he was 16 -- was just seconds away from his American Dream. And nothing would keep his family from celebrating.

"We didn't want to get kicked out, man," said one of his brothers, Alonzo Cruz, the tears still wet on his cheeks. "But your little brother is going for the gold. I mean, what are you going to do?"

Only one thing could make his cheering section stand quietly. Henry was on the top of the medal platform, that gold medal dangling from his neck. The stars and stripes started rising toward the rafters.

His family turned toward the flag and put their hands over their hearts, and listened to the national anthem.

Their anthem.

You want to see what a gold medal means to a family? What being an American means, too? You had to be in the Olympic wrestling gymnasium on Tuesday afternoon, when the youngest freestyle champion in U.S. history won this improbable championship.

You had to hear Henry Cejudo tell the story of what his family endured just to reach this point. He was born in Los Angeles to illegal immigrants from Mexico City who met in the U.S. His mother, Nelly Rico, was a confused 15-year-old girl when she crossed the border in the dead of night.

"She actually thought it was going to be easy," Henry Cejudo, just 21, said with a smile. "She thought it was going to be Disneyland. She came (to the border) with high heels, all dressed up."

Her family would live in the shadows of Disneyland for several years, but their life was no trip to the amusement park. Henry never knew his father, Jorge Cejudo, who spent much of his short life bouncing in and out of prison.

That left Nelly Rico to raise her seven children, and she taught them to understand the opportunity they had living here, to embrace it and to chase their dreams, even if it was never easy.

Henry Cejudo, left, fights for control with Tomohiro Matsunaga of Japan during the freestyle wresting 55kg gold medal match Tuesday.
He and his seven siblings called her "The Terminator" for the no-nonsense way she ran their household, but when wrestling became the passion for her youngest boys, she worked multiple jobs on assembly lines and cleaning bathrooms to make sure they never had to.

Mis ninos de horo, she would call them when they returned home from school. (ITAL) My little golden boys..

The family was constantly on the move -- from Los Angeles, to New Mexico and to Phoenix -- sometimes to stay away from the influence of Henry's father, other times to find cheaper rent.

"We probably moved 50 times," Henry Cejudo said, so many times that he didn't know what to put as his hometown on the U.S. wrestling bio. There was no time to feel sorry for themselves. "If you cry about anything in our house, they laugh at you."

His coach, Frank Saenz, would go door to door in their neighborhood raising money to support his travel schedule. Henry and his brothers would sell tamales -- for $1 or $2, depending on what neighborhood they were selling them in -- to help buy equipment.

This is a family that had nothing but each other. Henry and his older brother Angel, the one who inspired him to wrestle, would take turns running laps at the local track. When one brother finished, he would take off their one pair of sneakers and give them to the other.

Angel and Henry also shared a bed -- the bottom bunk, while two other siblings shared the top. It wasn't until Henry went to Colorado Springs to train with Team USA full-time that he had a bed of his own.

"I was lonely, to be honest with you," Henry Cejudo. "I felt like I needed someone next to me."

Cejudo had never won a match in an international tournament coming into Beijing, but as his family waved flags and cheered, he defeated three more experienced wrestlers. Then, with that gold medal at stake, he flipped Japanese rival Tomohiro Matsunaga to seal the victory.

USA's Henry Cejudo, right, celebrates his win over Tomohiro Matsunaga of Japan in the freestyle wresting 55kg gold medal match Tuesday
He fell to his knees and sobbed. The referee held one of his hands in the air as Cejudo used the other to wipe away tears, then he set off sprinting around the arena floor with the stars-and-stripes draped across his shoulders.

The gold medal was his, but soon, he will drape it around his mother's neck. Nelly Rico watched Tuesday from her latest home in Colorado Springs, too nervous to make the trip to China.

"I'm proud of my Mexican heritage," Henry Cejudo said. "But I'm an American. It's the best country in the world. They call it the land of opportunity, and it is."

He earned $65,000 for this gold-medal victory, from government grants and private donors, but he has no plans to spend a single penny. He wants to put it toward his next goal in life.

"I want to be a millionaire!" he said, not a trace of doubt on his face. "I bet I can do it -- I just won gold, man!"

He looked down to the medal pressed against his chest, a shiny symbol of the Olympic spirit colliding with the American Dream.