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The Pedros were golden in support
SYDNEY, Australia -- Today I owe a debt of thanks to the United States' first family of judo: the Pedros. These are pleasant, dedicated working-class people who hail mostly from different Massachusetts towns and have devoted their passion to throwing other people's weight around. It's also a debt of gratitude to the families of all Olympic athletes who never get enough credit for their 5 a.m. rises and the second jobs they hold down to pay for lessons in gyms, pools, rinks and tracks that are not as well kept or as glamorous as the Exhibition Hall, the judo venue to which James Pedro Jr. (a.k.a. Jimmy) caught the athlete shuttle bus on Monday. We scribes can be a cynical lot and when we write appropriately about doping tests and bidding scandals, we sometimes overlook the moonlighting and second mortgages that get the athletes here. We previewed Jimmy in our Sept. 11 Olympic preview issue and predicted that the 29-year old would win a gold medal in the 161-pound class. That also meant we felt he would make history. No U.S. judoka had ever won an Olympic gold medal, and last year Jimmy became only the third to win a world title. A bronze medalist at the 1996 Atlanta Games, he has devoted nearly two of the intervening four years to training for "one day." This is Pedro's devotion in a nutshell: A Brown University graduate, he spent a total about half his time on the road travelling to training camps and tournaments in Europe and Asia where the competition is simply better. His wife Marie, a schoolteacher in Lawrence, Mass., contributes as much as her husband does to support their three kids. The five Pedros share a home with Marie's parents. Jimmy's father, a judo alternate on the '76 Olympic team, is his inspiration, having coached his son from age five. "I never crossed the line with my dad," Jimmy told me. "Every time I did something, I thought about facing him." With the blessing of the Pedros senior and junior -- and the help of judo press officer Gary Abbott -- I've arranged to sit with the first family of judo while Jimmy fights. It's a tricky operation, since the Pedros' seats are spread out over the arena and my credential is for the media seating on the opposite side. The first few rows in the hall were not originally ticketed to the public and the Pedros were counting on sitting together in the delegation seating area, but that prospect depends upon whom they can coax into taking different seats and which seats have since been scooped up. As I walk into the Exhibition Hall 90 minutes before the competition starts, I cross Jimmy's path and try not to disturb him. "Brian, did you meet my family?" he asks. "Sorry, I just got here," I tell him. "I'll find them. I don't want to ... " "They're right there," he says, pointing to the only patch of people in the stands on the opposite side of the arena floor. "That's my father in the middle."
I meet Jim Pedro in person for the first time. He thanks me for my interest and introduces me to Jimmy's older sister Tanya, who studied judo until age 16, and the youngest brother Mike, a rising star who could be on the team at the 2004 Athens Games. There are a dozen or so friends and cousins scattered about, finding food or walking off jitters. Each of them has left a jacket on a seat, hoping it will remain unclaimed throughout the day so the family can sit together. "We're going to give this a try," Jim says. "We put in for tickets, what, two years ago? Then we waited, waited and found out six months before the Games that we didn't get the tickets we needed and they were sold out. 'Would you like to buy tickets to another event,' they asked us. Excuse me? So we called other people, did a few more things. Officially we're sitting all over. We got here, that's the important thing." Jim tells me that Marie has chosen to stay home with the kids, waiting for that magical phone call to wake her up first thing in the morning on the East Coast. There is a sea of blue shirts around me that read: Jimmy Pedro, 1999 World Champion. Go Jimmy. Go strong. Go gold. Only Jim isn't wearing one. He has on the same beige pullover, tan slacks and even the same socks he wore to Jimmy's win in the '99 world finals. Jim is scanning Jimmy's loaded draw in the 34-man field. First he must fight a tough South Korean, Choi Yong-Sin. If Jimmy wins and form holds, he'll stay in the winners' bracket and fight Argentina's Sebastian Alquati, who gave him a tough bout at the last Olympics; Kenzo Nakamura of Japan, the defending Olympic champion; and Michel Almeida, the European champ from Portugal, in the afternoon session. "If he can throw the Korean, really pound him," Jim tells me, "he'll have a big momentum." After a pause he says, "he's tough, though. He's tough. Say, what time do you have?" Jim Pedro is fidgety. I get the story of how the family paid its way to its third Olympics, and about the help they got from friends and other family. "I'm a fireman," Jim says. "What do I do? I learn to save." Jim's cousin, Gerald Hebert, who is sitting on my right, kicked in a few frequent flier miles. He offers to fetch me something for my sore throat. The number of Team Pedro members taking orders for food runs has swelled to about seven. There is chemically reactive nervous energy all around me. Jim relives for me the one judo match at the '76 trials in Los Angeles that cost him a shot at his own Olympic berth. He tells me that Jimmy is a mat person, stronger perhaps than anyone in the field when the fighting gets close, but he must avoid costly mistakes. Ninety seconds into his first five-minute bout, Jimmy misses a chance to throw Choi when he has the South Korean in a vulnerable spot. "Lost it," says Jim who is windmilling his hands, one over the other, to tell Jimmy to keep fighting. Jimmy is nearly a hundred feet away, but he sees or hears his father's every instruction. He looks and listens for them at every stoppage. "On the grip," Jim yells. "Not that grip." Jimmy is noticeably tentative. He falls behind and seems unable to penetrate the Choi's defenses in the final seconds. "Shoot it, Jimmy, shoot it," Jim yells. But it's too late. Jimmy's quest for gold is done after one match. There is a scattering of cheering fans with Korean flags around us, but in the immediate area there is silence and little animation. Matches continue for five minutes before Jim breaks the silence, saying, "he didn't look good." Jimmy's chances have become very slim. In order to have a shot at one of the two bronze medals awarded in each judo class, he'll need to win five straight bouts and also get some luck. Only if Choi, the man who beat him, advances out of his bracket, do the players he defeated have second life in a repechage bracket. The Pedros are therefore Choi's biggest fans for the next two bouts. First Jimmy topples Sagdat Sadykov of Kazakhstan in 3:50. "He still doesn't look real sharp," Jim says. Then Choi surprises Nakamura, the Olympic champ, sending Team Pedro into a frenzy, and quieting the assembled Japanese in rows three and four. "I'm sorry for the people behind us," Hebert tells me. "It's not personal; it's family." Then Jimmy throws Alquati in 3:04. On his way off the mat, Jimmy looks for Jim who yells, "Jimbo, you gotta show 'em you want it." "Let's go, brother," Mike shouts. "Well, Nakamura's next," Jim says. "It's all here for him." Jimmy is looking better against Nakamura, repelling a few thrusts at the legs and reaching for that one opening. "Get the sleeve," Jim yells. "The sleeve!" The two men receive dual cautions. "Finish the move. Do it." During a break, Jimmy glances at the diagram Jim is holding up and nods at his father. With 1:53 on the clock, Jimmy throws his foe for an ippon and pumps his right fist in victory. "That's the move," Jim says. "Ochi-gara (an inside leg trip). Right for the sleeve. Atta-boy, Jimmy." It's almost 7 p.m. The evening session, we're told, will start at 8:30. With three down and two to go, the family is hoping to stay in its seats during the break. Can't do it, they're told. Have to leave and come back. But what to do about the seats? They can't be 90 minutes ahead of everyone if the doors re-open in 30 minutes. Will the seats be ticketed in the evening? Will swifter squatters claim them first? My press pass and I are deputized. I'll save as many as I can, I tell them. "Jim wants to make sure he's in the same seat," Hebert tells me. For Jim and his lucky socks, I'm sticking like glue to the lucky seat in section 103, row 2, seat 17. The family returns to the same seats after the break, but only after coaxing two ticket holders into moving one down and two over. I'm sure I'm not long for this area myself, though listening to Jim is like overhearing the Earl Woods or James Jordan or Walter Gretzky of judo. "I've aged five years today," Tanya tells Michael. Jim is giving me a preview. Almeida of Portugal is next. "Jimmy's the best on the mat," Jim says. "but he's got to get him there. See, I knew Nakamura was in trouble when he started doing matwork before the match. He doesn't usually do that. That meant he was in trouble." He then relays a conversation he had with Mike during the break: "I told him it's going to be up to you after this and he says, 'I trained this summer.' Yeah, well, you didn't train hard enough. It's different here." I'm toast. There are too many people looking for seats and it's me or one of the Pedros. "We'll talk later," Jim tells me as I depart for the media seating on the other side of the arena. "Come back and see us." Jimmy's next bout is his most convincing. He immobilizes Almeida in the match and steals a victory in 51 seconds. One more win and Jimmy will be the first U.S. judoka to win two Olympic medals. But a half-hour later Jimmy looks whupped as soon as he steps onto the mat against Anatoli Lariukov of Belarus. Lariukov throws Jimmy in 31 seconds. I look across the arena to section 103, row 2 to see hugs and heads resting on shoulders. I can't spot any tears from this distance, but I sense that this family doesn't shed many for a fight that is honorably fought. Steve Cohen, the U.S. head coach, addresses us just minutes later in the mixed zone. "It wasn't meant to be today," Cohen says. "He wasn't himself today, but he came back a long way from down. He's a champion. My son, my nephews, everyone around me gets to touch him, because once you've touched him you've changed." Jimmy passes us and assures us he'll return to see us after first finding his dad. "Where is my family sitting?" a voice asks. "Are they together? Can we get over there?" I see seats near the Pedros starting to empty just as Italy's Giuseppe Maddaloni does a forward cartwheel on the far mat after throwing Brazil's Tiago Camilo to win the gold medal, and at this point I'm in a journalistic quandary. "Come see us," Jim had said earlier. But, frankly, they've done enough. Maybe I'd have been a willing eavesdropper in victory or if this had been a magazine deadline piece. Who knows? Jimmy greets a dozen of us at the edge of the mixed zone ten minutes later. His forehead is cut and his blinking left eye suggests it's taken a good poke. "I have no regrets," he tells us. "For all this time I've never taken any time off. I did all the right things. Now I have a four-year-old at home and for 18, 20 months I haven't seen her grow up." We exchange thank yous again and Jimmy apologizes unnecessarily. I wish his family well, and tell them all how neat they are and Jimmy smiles wearily. No medal will be wrapped around his neck as he leaves Sydney, but when dad returns home, a family of arms will be waiting to give their champion a more rewarding embrace. 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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