Cejudo wins freestyle wrestling gold

BEIJING — He wrapped himself in the flag almost as though he had been born in it.

Born in the USA.

Henry Cejudo, the son of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, is a documented gold medalist, America's first in freestyle wrestling at the 2008 Olympics.

"I don't want to let it go," Cejudo said as he tugged at a flag that flew like a star-spangled cape as he raced around in tears and triumph after winning the 121-pound division Tuesday night over Japan's Tomohiro Matsunaga. "I might sleep with this.

"This is cool, coming out of a Mexican-American background. It just feels so good. Not many Americans get to do something like this. I feel like I'm living the American dream."

After years of sleeping four and five to a bed and sometimes not certain where he would sleep at all in a journey from Los Angeles to New Mexico to Phoenix and Colorado, Cejudo finally arrived at a destination, the one place, he was certain he would occupy. The medal stand's top pedestal was as much of an ambition as it was a dream. Only there would Cejudo finally be comfortable.

"I always knew I was going to be here," said Cejudo, who defeated Matsunaga with a 2-2 tiebreaker in the first period and then 3-0 in a best-of-three match after winning three bouts within about 90 minutes earlier in the day. "I watched the Olympics as a kid, and I just knew it.

"Yeah, it was tough. But, man, is it worth it."

The tough part, perhaps, was just overcoming the uncertainties of a young life with a troubled, mostly absent father and never far from streets full of more potential mayhem than meals.

"He has done an unbelievable job coming from the environment he came from," said Terry Brands, his coach at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. "He grew up in Maryvale, Ariz. He could be in prison. Could be a drug runner. Could be this, could be that. He's done an unbelievable job of not being a victim."

He has, in part because he and his brothers are sick of the questions about where and how they grew up.

"Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of it, to tell you the truth" said Angel Cejudo, a four-time Arizona high school state champion who was his brother's training partner in Beijing. "It's Phoenix. Not Compton. Not Detroit. It's not that bad. We just didn't have much."

What they had was a mom, Nelly Rico. She often worked two jobs and kept her sons in church and off the streets.