A Mexican Boxer Was Begging On Buses Before Winning An Olympic Medal

Every athlete who comes to the Rio Olympics has a story. Some are of precocious brilliance, some are of last chance glory, still others are of long roads back from injury. But the ones that most consistently pull at the heartstrings are the stories of athletes who had to overcome huge obstacles just to make it to the Games — the athletes who achieve victory the moment they march out in the parade during the opening ceremonies. Boxer Misael Rodriguez is one of those athletes with one of those stories.

The Mexican athletic federation is woefully underfunded, and run by a former state prosecutor, Alfredo Castillo, rather than anyone with an athletic background. The country’s Olympic delegation has underwhelmed at these Games, and Rodriguez took bronze in the middleweight division on Thursday for the country’s first medal. That’s quite an accomplishment, especially considering that due to the program’s poor funding, Rodriguez and his fellow Mexican boxers had to literally beg for the money to travel to qualifying tournaments.

After the former Mexican Boxing Federation chair (who apparently lost a power struggle with Castillo) said publicly (and roughly translated), “I hope Conade [Mexico’s Olympic federation] doesn’t take credit for this medal, because it was his very personal effort,” Castillo responded by denying the lack of support to the BBC (translated):

We will report punctually one by one, to whom we had confronted, whatever support we had, what competitions we went to, our methodology of work, what we looked for in the trips taken. Much time was invested into each one of them. We spent countless time invested with medics and physiotherapists over one evaluation.

We’re inclined to side with the athlete over a bureaucrat with dubious qualifications, but Mexico’s paltry medal count shames Castillo far more than Rodriguez could.

(Via BBC)