Hot! John Orozco

By Matt Gagne, SI.com

Before your dog arranged to be able to conquer the actual world, John Orozco took on a new mountain. Last fall, regarding 30 days prior to the 2011 World Gymnastic Championships inside Tokyo, among the prime U.S. medal hopes headed to be able to Japan, risked livelihood and also arm or leg by way of barrelling affordable two bottle black precious stone ski fields around Aspen, Colo. He is often a tumbler through deal his or her teammates name him the particular Silent Ninja both intended for his or her Matrix-like capacity for you to rocket throughout the atmosphere and their knack regarding sneaking through to your competition but there seems to be next to nothing flowing concerning their somersaults upon skis. "Snow ended up being receiving inside my T-shirt, this poker hands had been frickin' numb plus my own experience appeared to be wet. I appeared to be going down everywhere," claims Orozco, who had under no circumstances skied before. "My discipline did not find out about it. He'd be like, 'So close to Worlds? What the hell?'"

Vitaly Marinitch, Orozco's private coach at the U.S. Olympic Training Center with Colorado Springs, was stunned to learn regarding his celebrity pupil's ski venture nevertheless must not possess been. "He's pretty, on the web express it, crazy," affirms Marinitch. "But he's a natural at gymnastics."

The 19-year-old Orozco is the most finished all-around gymnast around the U.S. gents team, that is gunning for its earliest Olympic rare metal medal in the group levels of competition (Monday with 11:30 a.m. ET) since 1984. He returned from of which skiing journey for being the top part American finisher (fifth) for the World Championships, serving the actual U.S. win the bronze medal. Then around June your dog won the particular U.S. country wide concept within St. Louis, edging defending champ Danell Leyva by simply .05 of the point. At the particular Olympic trial some months subsequently within San Jose, they finished next to help Leyva by way of less than a point.

Orozco's skills as well as the excitement surrounding your ex while in the lead-up in order to London he's been recently featured from a music movie from the group of musicians Gym Class Heroes and name-checked in your dialog by means of Michelle Obama propose that will his or her place inside the Olympics ended up being just about preordained. But to be a Puerto Rican with the Bronx who has the actual son of your retired sanitation technician and also a replace teacher, Orozco is surely an outlier in the as a rule suburban, upper middle-class sport. For the Silent Ninja, finding good results seemed to be no certain thing.

During considered one of his first vacations for the Olympic Training Center as a youthful teenager, the actual dark-skinned Orozco declined a sheet of dark chocolate cake offered simply by one particular with his / her peers. Another gymnast asked, "What, that you do not feed on your own kind?" Another time, one among his colleagues spoke up whenever Orozco had been expected where home was: "He's through Africa or something." At a closed society camp on the East Coast, a young youngster as soon as explained to Orozco, "Get faraway from me, this mother mentioned black individuals hold diseases."

Even from the New York City reduction pot, little ones with school would tell John, "Oh, gymnastics, that's gay." He'd simply jiggle his eyes in addition to ask them, "Can you do a backflip?"