Hot! John Orozco

By Matt Gagne, SI.com

Before your dog attempt to overcome your world, John Orozco took over a mountain. Last fall, about monthly leading to a 2011 World Gymnastic Championships inside Tokyo, among the prime U.S. honor hopes headed that will Japan, risked livelihood in addition to arm or leg simply by barrelling decrease dual black gemstone inclines within Aspen, Colo. He may be a tumbler by means of trade their teammates name him or her the Silent Ninja both for his Matrix-like ability to help soar throughout the surroundings along with his knack for sneaking up about the competitors but there was clearly nothing at all lovely about his somersaults on skis. "Snow ended up being getting in my T-shirt, my personal fingers were frickin' numb plus my personal face has been wet. I seemed to be falling everywhere," says Orozco, which have for no reason skied before. "My guru didn't be familiar with it. He'd possibly be like, 'So in close proximity to Worlds? What the hell?'"

Vitaly Marinitch, Orozco's coach in the U.S. Olympic Training Center inside Colorado Springs, was stunned to understand with his legend pupil's ski voyage nevertheless really do not have been. "He's pretty, how do you point out it, crazy," pronounces Marinitch. "But he's a natural during gymnastics."

The 19-year-old Orozco may be the many finished all-around gymnast about that U.S. men's team, which is gunning for its first Olympic yellow metal medal in the company competition (Monday at 11:30 a.m. ET) given that 1984. He returned coming from which skiing journey being the very best American finisher (fifth) on the World Championships, serving the particular U.S. gain your bronze medal. Then with June he won the actual U.S. country's name in St. Louis, edging defending champ Danell Leyva by means of .05 of a point. At the Olympic demo some weeks afterwards in San Jose, your dog complete minute in order to Leyva by means of less than your point.

Orozco's ability and the buzz around him or her within the lead-up to help London he or she continues to be featured inside a new music training video simply by the band Gym Class Heroes in addition to name-checked throughout a speech through Michelle Obama suggest this his / her place in the Olympics appeared to be almost preordained. But like a Puerto Rican coming from the Bronx who has the child of an out of production sanitation staff member and a exchange teacher, Orozco is definitely an outlier from a typically suburban, higher middle-class sport. For your Silent Ninja, acquiring being successful had been no confident thing.

During one of his primary trips in order to your Olympic Training Center as being a young teenager, the actual dark-skinned Orozco rejected an item of chocolate cake made available by among his peers. Another gymnast asked, "What, you don't consume your unique kind?" Another time, certainly one of their colleagues chatted in place when Orozco was inquired wherever residence was: "He's out of Africa or even something." At crowd camp within the East Coast, a young baby when shared with Orozco, "Get far from me, my mother explained ebony persons carry diseases."

Even from the New York City reduing pot, youngsters at university might notify John, "Oh, gymnastics, that may be gay." He'd merely roll his face and have them, "Can you do your backflip?"