Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
John Orozco, who moved to the Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs in 2010, has a rare mix of power and grace.
By JOHN BRANCH
Published: March 2, 2012
It would usually take an hour or more, depending on traffic, for Damaris Orozco to drive her youngest son a world away, from the far edge of the Bronx to World Cup Gymnastics in suburban Westchester County. At first it was a couple of times a week. But John Orozco was 9 when coaches saw Olympic potential. Soon, it was six days a week, even seven.
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Since he was a child, John Orozco, now 19, has traveled an hour or more from the Bronx to Westchester for practices.
While most parents dropped off their children and retrieved them hours later, Orozco’s mother usually sat on a folding chair in one corner of the balcony. She could see the vast sea of mats and bars and equipment below. And she could watch John.
Sometimes, through the din of activity, she would whistle — not a loud screech, but a gentle breeze of a tweet. A person next to her might not even notice. Somehow, though, John Orozco always heard.
He would turn and catch his mother’s eye. He knew what it meant: Get to work.
John Orozco always did. And now, at 19, oozing talent and charisma, Orozco may be the best all-around gymnast in the United States, one of the anointed “it” prospects for the London Summer Olympics.
“Hopefully I can bring home at least one gold medal,” Orozco said, wearing studs in his ears and the wisp of a moustache above his smile. “Just to have that title of ‘Olympic champion’ is my dream.”
His next step is Saturday’s American Cup, an invitational meet featuring 18 of the top male and female Olympic contenders, including women’s reigning world champion Jordyn Wieber of the United States, at Madison Square Garden.
For Orozco, it represents his second time performing at the famed arena. The first was when he was about 8, part of a team from a Manhattan gym invited to tumble during halftime of a Knicks game. Orozco was the top of the team’s pyramid.
But it was at World Cup Gymnastics in tony Chappaqua, in a cinder-block box of a building squeezed against the Saw Mill River Parkway, that Orozco began his climb toward London.
“He walked into the gym as a tryout, and he started doing back handsprings on the floor,” said Jason Hebert, one of Orozco’s coaches until Orozco moved to the Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs in late 2010. “Not just any back handsprings, but the most powerful back handsprings you’ve ever seen. And this was a 9-year-old kid.”
Soon, recognizing the combination of Orozco’s potential and his family’s finances, the gym was waiving the costs of lessons and gym time. Other benefactors with ties to the gym have quietly contributed, too, defraying the costs of raising a potential Olympic champion.
Orozco’s father, Will, is a retired crew supervisor for New York City’s sanitation department. Will and Damaris raised five children, plus took in a niece as a teenager, in a small cottage in Harding Park, a largely Puerto Rican enclave of bungalows along the water where, residents say, the Bronx and East rivers meet. Will expanded the house over the years, adding a second floor and extra bedrooms. The Empire State Building in Manhattan can be seen in the distance from the roof.
After years of being driven from the Bronx by his parents, John Orozco hopes his success can someday pay them back by lifting his family from the neighborhood. When that quest is relayed, the tears well up.
“Oh, get the water faucet going,” Damaris said, dabbing at her eyes.
The walls of World Cup Gymnastics feature framed copies of magazine and newspapers stories written about Orozco. On a pillar is a photograph of a team of boys from about a decade ago. Orozco is in the front row, shorter than the rest, his warm-up jacket hanging to his knees.
“Now he probably couldn’t fit his arms into a men’s large, his muscles are so large,” gym owner John Sabalja said.
Orozco is 5 feet 4 inches, maybe a smidge more, and weighs 160 pounds — “a little muscle ball,” he said. In a world where gymnasts teeter on that beam between strength and agility, Orozco is a rare combination of power and grace.
“He does things that are, like, physically impossible,” Hebert said. “He’ll just defy gravity and all laws of gymnastics.”
Led by Hebert and coach Carl Schrade, Orozco flew through the junior ranks, winning three consecutive national titles in the all-around before tearing his right Achilles’ tendon on a dismount during the 2010 meet in Hartford. On the mend a few months later, he moved to Colorado Springs to live and train.
Under the tutelage of Vitaly Marinitch, a Ukrainian who was part of the 1989 world champion Soviet Union team, Orozco has fine-tuned his technique and improved his strength and diet.
“I was a pizza monster,” Orozco admitted.
His Achilles’ tendon is still tender, and Orozco feels it during floor routines and on landings from the high bar. But something positive came from the injury, too. During the early months of rehabilitation, limited by what he could do on his feet, Orozco turned the pommel horse from his worst event to one of his best.
At the Winter Cup Challenge in Las Vegas in early February, Orozco finished first in the all-around, parallel bars and high bar, and second in the pommel horse. That performance vaulted him into the conversation about gold-medal contenders in London.
On Thursday, Will and Damaris Orozco were back in the balcony of World Cup Gymnastics, having made the familiar drive up from the Bronx.
“Dreams, for most kids, stay in a blur,” Will said. “For John, it’s starting to clear.”
John Orozco, between training sessions, used to work birthday parties at the gym. His three older brothers worked there, too, turning the daily treks from the Bronx into a one-family carpool. His parents, especially his mother, ate from the vending machines and could be trusted to be watching from the balcony.
For old times’ sake, Damaris tried out a whistle. It could barely be heard. But it surely echoed through one family’s ears with more urgency than ever: Get to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment