The packed house at the Olympic taekwondo hall cheered rivals and booed every point scored Saturday by Steve Lopez, the defending gold medalist from Texas.
But with his older brother Jean–also his taekwondo instructor–encouraging him from the edge of the mat, Lopez won his second gold medal in the men’s 176-pound category. He had won the 150-pound event in 2000.
“The day after I won the gold medal in 2000, I was already training, looking forward to this day,” Steve Lopez said. “Here I am. I’ve done it again.”
Asked if his brother was the best ever at the sport, Jean Lopez said, “He’s the Lance Armstrong, the Michael Jordan of taekwondo.”
Fans shouted “Iraq!” as the American won his first-round match 12-0 over Iraqi Raid Rasheed. But the ever-confident Lopez said the jeering did not bother him much.
“I expected that the crowd wouldn’t be on my side,” said Lopez, 25. “The United States is the best country in the world.”
Lopez overcame strong challenges in the quarterfinal, semifinal and final rounds.
The man he considered his toughest rival, Mexico’s Victor Manuel Garibay Estrada, fell 4-2 in the quarterfinals. After that match, Jean Lopez all but predicted that the gold would be his brother’s.
“That was the toughest match for Steve,” Jean Lopez said of the quarterfinal. “I anticipate the rest of the matches will be pretty easy.”
But the semifinal against Iran’s Yossef Karami was closer than the quarterfinal.
Lopez scored the winning point with 22 seconds left in the third and final round, advancing 7-6.
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He said the short 20-minute gap between the quarterfinal and semifinal made the match against Karami more difficult.
After resting for two hours, Lopez beat Turkey’s Bahri Tanrikulu 3-0 in the gold-medal match.
Tanrikulu competed in the gold-medal match with an injured left arm. With less than 30 seconds left in the first round, the Turk fell to the mat, grabbing his arm in pain, but he continued.
After the match, Tanrikulu sat in an ambulance outside the arena with his arm in a cast. Lopez said he went into the final match unaware of his rival’s injury.
“It’s a full-contact sport,” he said, shrugging.
Jean Lopez, 30, also a world-class competitor, said their mother did not travel to Athens because she becomes very nervous when she watches her son compete. Jean Lopez said the family’s immigrant status makes winning gold for the U.S. more meaningful. Parents Julio and Ondina Lopez came to the U.S. from Nicaragua in the early 1970s.
Julio Lopez, an architect and structural engineer, worked for the government of dictator Anastasio Somoza. The family left Nicaragua because of the political instability that led to the overthrow of Somoza, Jean Lopez said.
“We’re the biggest patriots,” Jean Lopez said. “We do this for the U.S.”