"Her son, whom she sneaked into the United States as a baby because he was in ill health, would never have made the cut. He had flat feet, too-long arms, breathing problems. He could not figure out how to jump and looked funny when he ran.

 

“I didn’t see in him the talent,” Maria Alvarez said. “I know gymnastics is so hard, and he was not coordinated and a little fat. . . . You have to be fast, strong, flexible. You have to be quick for gymnastics. Those things are most important, most necessary. . . . I said, ‘He is going to have trouble.’ ”

 

She was right: He did have trouble. She was wrong, however, about everything else. Last month, Leyva won his first U.S. all-around title at the 2011 Visa Championships in St. Paul, Minn., topping two-time champion Jonathan Horton."

 

Danell Leyva was not successful in his early days of gymnastics. He remembers sobbing after finishing last place on high bar in his first competition at age 4 or 5. However, he never gave up and devoted his life to the sport, sometimes spending 12 hours per day in the gym owned by his mother and stepdad/coach Yin Alvarez. 

 

“I would be very persistent,” Leyva said. “I would get skills so much later than everyone else, but I would never stop. I would always keep going, keep going.”

 

Regardless of how he started, he's progressed very quickly in the past few years and was the youngest member of the 2009 World Championships team at just 18. This October in Tokyo he plans to challenge Kohei Uchimura for the all around gold and next summer in London he will be one of the favorites for a medal. It's on his list of goals, anyway: 

 

Click here to read the full article on the Washington Post by Amy Shipley.