After arduous journey, Molina makes it to Beijing

At the U.S. Olympic Trials, Javier Molina won all four of his bouts to secure a spot on Team USA. Robert Beck/SI

By Luis Fernando Llosa

Reprinted from SI Latino

For Javier Molina, the road to Beijing has been as grueling as it has been long.

In his first international competition, in 2006, he had to sidestep rabid fans as well as his opponents. At the Cadet World Championships in Istanbul, he defeated a Turkish boxer only to be showered with bottles and insults by a belligerently anti-U.S. crowd.

"That was scary," says Molina, who was then 16 and had to be escorted out of the arena by security personnel. "All the U.S. fighters were booed, no matter who they fought. But that experience was nothing compared with what I went through to get to Beijing."

Indeed, Molina could be the poster child for Olympic perseverance after enduring an arduous 13-month qualifying ordeal. In order to compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials, the Mexican-American boxer first had to qualify for the National Championships. He failed in his first three attempts: in February 2007 at the Regionals in San Diego, in April at the Midwestern Trials in Cincinnati and in May at the Golden Gloves in Tennessee. "I hadn't felt that nervous since I was a little kid," Molina says. "It was like I was fighting my first bouts as an amateur all over again."

His trainer, Robert Luna, a former U.S. Army boxer, drove him from Tennessee to the Eastern Trials in Cocoa, Fla. -- one of only two remaining venues where Molina could qualify. During the 10-hour trip, Luna tried to ease the pressure on his young fighter, stopping in Atlanta to take in a Braves baseball game. In Florida. they drove to a lake where they had a heart-to-heart.

"I told him to relax and try to visualize his fights frame by frame," Luna says. "Boxing is 80 percent mental. You can always spot an opponent's weaknesses if you stay calm." Luna also promised that he would stick by Molina and prepare him for the next stage of his boxing career.

Inspired by his trainer's faith in him, Molina won five fights and earned one of the final two spots in the Nationals. "Looking back, I see that losing all those times was good for me," he says. "I gained a lot of experience. With each fight I got better, and my mind got stronger."

At the Nationals that June, he tore through the competition, beating all six of his opponents in the 141-pound division. After that, he and Luna traveled to the Olympic Trials in Houston, where the fighter won all four of his bouts to secure a spot on Team USA.

But there was still one more hurdle to leap before booking his flight to Beijing.

In March 2008, at the first Americas qualifying tournament in Trinidad and Tobago, Molina took third place in his weight class -- good enough for an Olympic berth -- by overwhelming Canada's Kevin Bizier by a score of 20-5.

That victory, however, would prove to be bittersweet. Javier's twin brother, Oscar, with whom he had trained since they were children, had failed to make the U.S. Olympic team in the 152-pound category. Oscar later won a spot on the Mexican team, but he was eliminated from Olympic contention in the final Americas qualifier, in Guatemala in April.

"I was heartbroken when Oscar didn't qualify for Beijing," says Javier. "I felt like crying."

On a cloudless Sunday afternoon in June, the twins' half-brother, Manny Molina, a burly cement-truck driver, hosted 30 members of the close-knit Molina clan in the backyard of his house in Ontario, Calif. Manny cooked up heaps of tacos laden with cow's tongue, chicken, beef tripe and pork. The adults settled in for a six-hour marathon of the poker game Texas Hold 'Em (with a $5 buy-in), while the little, sunburned Molinas with mohawk haircuts splashed about in an inflatable pool.

The hours flew by as the family indulged in good-natured ribbing, singing (by the charismatic Manny) and, of course, the card game. Javier, Oscar and their 22-year-old brother Carlos, also a promising fighter with a 3-0 pro record, battled with Manny and with Carlos' girlfriend. None of them were willing to abandon the game, even as dusk settled in.