Journey's end

Pedro thrilled to end Olympic judo career with bronze medal

Jimmy Pedro scrapped his way to a medal after a loss to Lee Won Hee. AP

When Jimmy Pedro decided to end his two-year retirement from judo in 2003, his father, Jim Sr., a 1976 U.S. Olympic team alternate, offered some stern advice. "Don't just come back to fight. You've got to want to win," he told Jimmy, the U.S.'s first world judo champion (in 1999), who'd finished a crushing fifth in Sydney.

Pedro didn't take the lightweight gold medal Monday, but he certainly made his dad proud, surviving four exhausting repechage matches (after a loss to champion Lee Won Hee of South Korea) and earning a remarkable bronze in his fourth -- and final -- Olympic Games. Pedro also won bronze in the 1996 Games.

"I knew I was still good enough to compete with the best in the world," said the beaming 33-year-old Pedro, "and I had to fight every single moment of this day to come back and win."

After Pedro sealed his bronze medal against reigning world runner-up Daniel Fernandes of France, he climbed into the stands at Ano Liossia Olympic Hall to hug his father and his younger brother, Mike. It was Mike who had served as Pedro's training partner, simulating the Russian style of Belarus' Anatoly Laryukov (one of Pedro's repechage victims), and it was Jim Sr., of course, who'd introduced Jimmy to judo as a six-year-old.

As the two men embraced, neither had to say a word. "When he's choking up," the son would say, "you know you've done good."