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A family affair 'Fighting' Lopez clan shares the joy of gold
SYDNEY, Australia -- When the Lopez family first welcomed me into their home in Sugarland, Tex., earlier this summer, my skeptical alter ego wondered if I was getting a show. Hugs and kisses were everywhere, the kind you dispense on Thanksgiving for family you haven't seen in a November or two. These folks had just eaten breakfast together. What gives?, I wondered, as I walked in with the four Lopez offspring. First Dad Julio hugged eldest son Jean, who embraced mom Ondina after she kissed youngest son Mark. Daughter Diana and middle son Steven waited their turn and then made the rounds. Everybody got theirs as though they were passing the stuffing and awaiting the cranberry sauce. By the end of the day, I realized this was how it was: the family that fought together, hugged together -- because the Lopez's believe fighting and family can make you stronger. For this family, the fighting took the form of taekwando, a sport in which all four children grew up competing. They showed me pictures of that upbringing. Much of their sparring took place in the back of their garage, whose walls are riddled with holes from kicks gone awry.
Jean, 27, mentors the other siblings. He was also the first of the group to bring home medals and trophies. Though not officially retired, he chose to coach the other three in their quest for Olympic berths this summer rather than compete himself. Steven, 21, was a world bronze medalist and national honors National Honor Society member -- and the only one member of the family to make the U.S. taekwondo team at the trials in Colorado Springs. Mark, 18, also won a world bronze and is truly the showman of the four, but he missed out at this year's trials. Diana, 16, also lost at the trials, but plans to stick with it for four more years if her love of volleyball doesn't get the better of her. Steven's three siblings flew to Sydney this week to see if he could become the first American to win a gold medal in taekwondo. Julio, a structural engineer, was there, too. Ondina, a housewife, simply gets too nervous when she watches her kids fight, so she chose to stay home. "It's dangerous to sit next to my mother when we fight," Steven told me as he mimicked different animated poses. "Anyone sitting next to her gets bruises all over." Steven made quick work of his early opponents, but barely held off Germany's Aziz Acharki to reach the final against Sin Jun-sik of South Korea. Sin took the early 1-0 lead, before Steven began to assert himself, scoring the decisive point of the bout with his only back-kick of the night. After time expired, both Jean and Diana hopped barricades and had to be restrained by arena security. "But it's my brother!" Jean shouted. "Wouldn't you do the same thing?" Two large officers might have tossed Jean into Darling Harbour, but for the family-member accreditation badge around his neck. "As soon as I came out onto the floor I caught myself," Jean said later. "I thought, 'Oh, I'm not out here, am I?' I thought I was Michael Johnson sprinting toward my brother." As a man wrapped his arms around Diana's waist and spun her back in the direction of the stands, she pleaded her case by telling the man, "But I'm the little sister. I'm supposed to be like this." She, too, was released by dint of her own giddiness. The entire family came back to the main press center to chat with reporters who hadn't made it the evening bouts in the evening. How often, one wanted to know, was Steven thinking of his family during the bouts? "Every minute," he answered. "Everything I am today I am because of them. They were out there fighting with me. I could feel it." Then I took them into the SI office to phone home and tell Ondina what she had missed. In the intervening two hours between Steven's victory and that phone call, he received his medal, heard his anthem, completed doping control, talked twice to print reporters, once to television and gave a long hug to his father in an arena hallway, losing most of his voice as he said, "We did it, daddy. We did it." In those two hours, Ondina had already taken a dozen phone calls before the one from Steven. His half of the conversation began something like this: "Momma, I won the gold medal. I won it Momma, for you, for all of us. . . Jessy called you first? . . . No, I was losing 1-0 to the Korean and I caught him with a back-kick. Yeah, that one. . . Why not? You'll be fine. No, don't worry, you'll be fine. . ." The problem, it seemed, was that every reporter in the Houston metro area wanted to speak to Ondina, who is naturally shy. "Just be calm and speak clearly, Mom," Diana yelled from the back. Later Diana recounted her previous two days: "I haven't slept. I have no nails left. I was up going to the bathroom every five minutes." Julio told his kids he would build a custom medal crystal box for the medal. Mark insisted he'd seen Steven fight this way many times before: "He's really patient," Mark explained, "so a lot of his fights are close. Too close." As I prepared to say goodbye, I was first thanked for the use of the office with handshakes and finally with hugs. (Memo to aspiring sports reporters: This does not happen when you cover major league baseball.) I'm off to have a word with that skeptical alter ego. Sports Illustrated writer-reporter Brian Cazeneuve is in Sydney covering the
Games for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back daily to read Cazeneuve's
behind-the-scenes reports from Down Under.
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