by Lisa Fenn
I received Liddie’s messages while in the pediatrician’s office. Saxon had been constipated for nearly a week, and there was growing fear of an obstructed bowel. As I described his symptoms and recent dietary intake to the doctor, bing! A new text message popped up. He’s through second match. Made a mistake but recovered. I held my writhing son down for X-rays and exams while my own stomach knotted up, waiting for results from the doctor and from Dallas. Bing! Won his third match in six seconds. He’s focused. Just gotta keep doing what he’s doing.
The gastroenterologist sent us home. If Saxon didn’t have a bowel movement by the next morning, surgery was imminent. My eyes welled, clutching my young son on my lap as he moaned, praying for him, and praying for Dartanyon.
And then: Fourth match over. Dar is the US Champ.
“So now he’s in the challenge round. This is the part that really matters. He can do this,” Liddie said, calling during the break. “He’s just gotta stick to the plan.”
I rocked Saxon, taking deep breaths, hoping for a big poop and for two underdog wins. After the stumbling blocks of Dartanyon’s windshield wiper fiasco, his broken ankle, and his defeat and tears in Mexico, I couldn’t believe he was in this position. In fact, his unlikely ascent to the finals caught even the tournament announcer by surprise: “Please turn your attention to mat six, for the ninety-kilo fight-off between Ryan Jones and . . . and . . . Davey Crockett?”
“Did he just call me Davey Crockett?” Dartanyon asked, incredulous. “He just called me Davey Crockett!”
Liddie slapped him on the backside. “Don’t worry about it. Go out there and make ’em call you by your name.”
Liddie and Dartanyon had studied Ryan intently that spring. He was skilled in groundwork, but less athletic than Dartanyon with his throws. Ryan would be trying to slow down the tempo to contain Dartanyon’s quickness, waiting for the fight to hit the ground. “Don’t go down there,” Liddie told Dartanyon. “Move him and drag him. Create momentum, create momentum, and then freeze! and throw.” Twenty-five seconds into the match, that is exactly what Dartanyon did, catching Ryan with an ouchi gari. Liddie’s adrenaline rushed.
“Dartanyon’s strong. You gotta be careful or he’ll hurt you,” Liddie said to a bystander. “I work out with him.”
In their next bout, Dartanyon again accelerated the pace beyond Ryan’s comfort, and again it worked. Dartanyon quickly finished him with an uchi mata. In total, Dartanyon needed just four minutes and thirty-five seconds on the mat to win six matches—every one of them by ippon—the highest score a fighter can achieve. Dartanyon would represent the United States at the 2012 London Paralympic Games.
His lips began to quiver as he came off the mat, trying to comprehend what he had just accomplished. Liddie greeted him with a hug, and then handed him the phone. “Lisa, I’m going to London,” Dartanyon cried. “I’m going to London.”
“You’re going to London!” I squealed. “I can’t believe you won!”
“I won. I won everything. I’m goin’,” he said. “I don’t even know what to do right now.” There was nothing to do but revel in the moment. Weary and parched from wandering through the previous two years, this was the oasis we desperately needed. This was evidence that something we were doing was working, that effort could lead to results.
“I love you, Dartanyon,” I said. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I love you too.”
Saxon had a successful poop that night, but once back home, our champion failed remedial English for the third time. I had to smile. There seemed no way around the “two steps forward, one step back” nature of our progress. But with London as our beacon, we dared to hope our steps might carry us toward brighter days ahead.
IT WAS LATE May 2012, and he called at four o’clock in the morning. He was crying.
“Leroy, I’m here,” I said, getting my bearings. “What is it?”
“It’s over.” He seemed unable to say anything else.
“What’s over?” I asked, and then waited.
“Kayla and me are breaking up,” Leroy finally said.
I visited later that summer. The tension between Kayla and him was thick and uncomfortable. They were two kids, acting out a dramatic high school breakup, and yet between them was a young child who needed them to grow up. I tried to alleviate the stress by buying groceries and diapers. I helped Kayla pick up job applications. I went with Leroy to class and met with his professors, all of whom agreed Leroy had great potential as an artist but a questionable work ethic from which to grow his raw talent. I explained Leroy’s background, hoping to persuade them to invest in him more fully.
I met Leroy’s friends, all gamers—nerdy, unkempt, bodies that doubled as canvases for piercings and tattoos. I extended my hand to introduce myself to one of them. “I know who you are,” he said. “Leroy talks about you all the time.”
“He does? What does he say?”
“He says you’re the mom he should have had from the beginning.”
CHAPTER 14
LONDON
Dartanyon had no business being in London. Liddie said it was akin to a walk-on making the starting five of the Miami Heat when LeBron was their king. “And I don’t mean like a college player walking on,” he said. “I mean like some guy just walking in off the street.” When Liddie realized he was about to send a green belt to the Paralympic Games, he had a moment similar to Hudson’s two years prior. He quickly threw more skills at Dartanyon and tested him for a brown belt—a milestone that once again felt insufficient. “Who goes to the Games as a brown belt?” Liddie wondered. Then he remembered that everything in Dartanyon’s life had been a long shot. Why not add this to the list?
Dartanyon looked positively dapper, dressed in his navy-blue Ralph Lauren suit and beret for the opening ceremonies. Waving his American flag, he walked in the Parade of Nations before 80,000 fans. But one spectator was notably missing: Arthur. Though he had avoided prison time for the $25,000 in back child support that he owed, the State Department barred him from obtaining a passport. Arthur’s level of debt designated him a flight risk. I applied for an exception and personally vowed to return Arthur to US soil. My appeal was denied. “I appreciate how hard you tried,” Dartanyon said. “But it still hurts that he can’t be here for me.”
Dartanyon and I watched the opening day of judo competitions together. London’s ExCeL Center was filled to capacity, and legions of raucous European nationals were cheering on their own athletes. They would soon root against Dartanyon. “My heart is pounding, and I don’t even have to fight,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Not gonna lie. I’m a little bit scared.”
But I had one secret weapon who could love louder than any European: Leroy. ESPN and I agreed that none of this felt right without him, and so the day before Dartanyon’s scheduled matches, we flew Leroy over. I picked him up at the airport and hid him behind a plant outside the venue. I lured Dartanyon outside by telling him a fan wanted to meet him. Instead, Leroy rolled up from behind him.
“Hey, you bringing home gold?” Leroy called out. Dartanyon turned. It couldn’t be, he thought. “I said, you bringing home gold!” Leroy repeated, his booming laughter giving him away. Dartanyon jumped into Leroy’s embrace. Nearly two years had passed since they last saw one another.
“I thought you couldn’t get out of school!” Dartanyon exclaimed, lunging for a second hug.
“Dude, nothing could ever keep me from being here,” Leroy said. “You’re my brother.” With that, Dartanyon’s posture relaxed, and his smile returned. Leroy wheeled down the Royal Victoria Dock with Dartanyon literally skipping beside him. They were off in their own world, singing songs and making up for lost time.
“Should we film this?” I asked Kameron.
“I think we should let them go,” he said. “This moment is theirs.”
DARTANYON STOOD IN the tunnel beside his first opponent, Olivier Cugnon de Sevricourt of France. Olivier was one of those technic
ally proficient judo pedigrees, fighting since the age of six. He won bronze in the 2008 Paralympic Games and was coming off a silver medal in the last European Championships.
Dartanyon pounded his chest as US Paralympic head coach Scott Moore barked last-minute reminders into his ear. But Moore’s words were drowned out by the two voices already sparring within Dartanyon. A whisper of doubt slithered around his mind like a viper, taunting him—You have no business being on this world stage. And that voice was right. He was a judo infant, the only brown belt in London. But then there was another voice, the steady voice of that young teenage boy who once sketched a daring kind of hope with his stubby yellow pencil, reminding him of the words that had gotten him this far—Destined for Greatness.
Dartanyon walked toward his mat, the voices battling inside his head, until he heard one that overpowered them both. “You can do this, Dar!” Leroy yelled, leaning over the padded wall. Dartanyon pointed as he passed, relieved to know his friend was once again alongside the mat, where he needed him most.
Olivier was known for his unconventional style of shoulder hunching, which made it difficult for opponents to get inside for a throw. The two appeared evenly matched for the first two minutes, trading attacks, relegating much of the action to the ground. Dartanyon worked quickly and walked confidently until halfway through regulation, when Olivier shot for a drop seoi nage and yanked Dartanyon’s arm awkwardly. Dartanyon returned to center, clutching his left shoulder.
Sensing weakness, Olivier immediately attacked, and though he couldn’t get Dartanyon on his back, he did get into his head. Each time the groundwork stagnated, it forced the official to call them back to center, eliciting a familiar theatrical response from Dartanyon: He rolled on the ground, holding his shoulder, then his knee, struggling to stand straight. “Come on, Dar, you gotta want this!” Moore yelled. The referee pulled Dartanyon upright; he slumped back over. She gave him a penalty for not attacking. Dartanyon huffed in disbelief, as though he had expected a hug instead.
After five minutes of regulation, the match was deadlocked and headed into the golden score—the sudden-death overtime of judo, where the first person to land a throw or score a point wins. But Dartanyon wasn’t thinking about winning. He was thinking about how to explain himself if he lost. And so he punctuated every action with a melodramatic reaction—dragging his head along the mat, letting his leg give out, clutching his shoulder—as if to preemptively say, “See, I wasn’t afraid. I was hurt.” Certainly he entered the Games with nagging injuries—torn ligaments in his foot and ring finger, limited range of motion in his shoulder, screws in his ankle—but every judoka lives with bone shards and shredded joints. The voices were convincing Dartanyon that the pain cut deeper than it did.
“Get up, Dar!” Moore screamed, pounding his fists on the coach’s table. “You gotta want this! Let’s go!”
A section of French fans booed and brandished their flags. Leroy tugged on his lips. I pulled my knees to my chest and buried my head in my elbow. If he lost here, he went home.
Then, after twenty-eight minutes on the mat—twenty-three minutes more than he had ever spent in a match before—Dartanyon showed a flash of aggression, using his right leg to drop Olivier on his side for a yuko. He thereby earned an advantage point—and the win—in a most unconvincing fashion.
Dartanyon hobbled back to the athlete warm-up area, which was off-limits to me. I thought back to the day I met him and the first competition of his I ever watched—the high school wrestling match he was supposed to win easily. But the camera and the ESPN name put a pressure on him for which he wasn’t prepared, and when he faltered, he explained it by limping and staggering and heaving over the trash. I thought of the Liberty Bell Classic, his first judo tournament, which he entered in full health and withdrew from two minutes later, blaming a strained knee. I had seen this drama before, and I could not let those lessons go to waste. I phoned Ed Liddie, who was with Dartanyon in the athlete holding area.
“Coach, I don’t think Dartanyon’s hurt. At least not as badly as he made it look,” I said. “I think he is nervous.”
“The trainers are assessing him now, so we’ll see,” Liddie said. I told him what I remembered from three years before and how the next day he’d bounced into the gym with Leroy on his back. “I think this may be what he does when he feels overmatched.”
“I saw a similar thing with him in Mexico,” Liddie said.
Dartanyon emerged from the training room. “Coach, my knee is really—”
“Come here, son,” Liddie interjected. “You got a decision to make.” Liddie refused Dartanyon praise for eking out his match. “You’ve gotta decide if you came here to win or if you are content to leave here with a nice pat-on-the-back-you-tried-hard-too-bad-about-the-leg kind of thing. Because you can either go home with sympathy, or you can go home with a medal. The choice is yours.”
Dartanyon limped through the warm-up room to consider Liddie’s words, surrounded by a sea of world champions and Paralympic coaches who were sizing up this new kid as he passed. Their stares bristled the back of Dartanyon’s neck, reminding him that this was no place for rookies. But Dartanyon thought about his mother’s funeral, about Kinsman, about the evictions. He had fought tougher rounds in this life, he thought. He walked back to Liddie—this time without the limp—and said, “I want some hardware, Coach.”
Liddie leaned in. “That’s what I want to hear,” he said. “Let’s go shock the world.”
“LET’S-GO-INGRAM! LET’S-GO-INGRAM! LET’S-GO-INGRAM!”
It seemed the entire arena was chanting for Dartanyon’s next opponent—hometown hero Samuel Ingram of Great Britain. Sam was the reigning European champion, and stood a full head taller than Dartanyon, reminding us that Dartanyon had not fully grown into this heavier weight class.
Sam went after Dartanyon like a street fighter. He quickly commandeered control of the match, securing the inside position on face-offs and maintaining a vise grip on Dartanyon’s right sleeve to nullify his dominant throwing arm. But Dartanyon fought to shake free, convincing us all that he no longer wanted an excuse. He wanted to win. Gone was the limp, back was the warrior. Dartanyon staved off all of Sam’s attacks for the first ninety seconds and got in a few of his own. But his inexperience showed against his veteran opponent, and Sam picked up on how Dartanyon preferred going to his left. With a deashi braai, Sam swept Dartanyon’s right foot and planted the square of his back onto the mat. Victory Ingram, by ippon.
“Even though Dartanyon lost, we’re happy because he fought better than he did in the match he won,” Liddie said. “He didn’t give up. He didn’t give in. He just got caught.”
Dartanyon still had a chance for bronze, if he could win his next two matches. “One match at a time still gets this done,” Liddie told him.
JAPAN MAY HAVE birthed judo, but Brazil made a science out of it. Known as the most technically sound fighters in the martial arts world, Brazilians exhibit mastery of every technique and come armed with all the tricks. If Brazilian judokas were baseball pitchers, you could never be sure if they were going to come at you with a curveball, a change-up, a slider, or a knuckleball. And they could make a swinging fool out of you with any one of those.
Securing the inside grip, Dartanyon attacked Brazilian powerhouse Roberto Santos off the hajime (Japanese for “start”), immediately trying to throw him. Roberto didn’t budge. “He was the strongest guy I had ever faced,” Dartanyon later said. But Dartanyon remained comfortable and focused, finally believing he belonged there. He also knew it was win or go home. So he attacked off every face-off, keeping Roberto on the defensive and unable to set up his own moves.
Halfway into the match, Dartanyon worked Roberto on his side and earned a half-point wazari. The strategy shifted. He no longer needed to throw Roberto. He needed to eat time off the clock by keeping the action on the ground. Roll him around, mess around down there, act like you’re trying to do something. But Roberto knew he didn’t h
ave time for the ground game. He shifted to aggressor, fighting out of Dartanyon’s holds, fighting off the clock. Roberto kicked it into a new gear, one fiercer and faster than Dartanyon had the stamina to defend. With thirty seconds on the clock, Dartanyon wondered if he had enough to grind it out. But just as his will was starting to wane, a familiar voice echoed.
“Let’s-Go-Crock-ett! Let’s-Go-Crock-ett!”
Though Leroy was the only one chanting, everyone in the arena, including Dartanyon, could hear his booming voice. Dartanyon gathered himself, channeling the kindred spirit of his best friend. I joined Leroy, clapping rhythmically. “Let’s-Go-Crockett! Let’s-Go-Crockett!” Then, to our surprise, a legion of Japanese fans behind us joined in, waving their national flag and cheering “Let’s-Go-Crockett!” Spanish fans were next, followed by a group of British children. And though it was probably only a few dozen people, it felt like a movement, as though Leroy had sparked the whole world to unite in cheering Dartanyon back to life.
Renewed, Dartanyon shot straight for a side pin, trapping Roberto between his arms. He squeezed him for ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five seconds. Pin. Dartanyon was headed to the bronze-medal match, and as he strode off the mat, he pointed, gratefully, to Leroy. I had flown Leroy over as a surprise. He turned out to be a savior. This time, Leroy carried Dartanyon.
IF BRAZILIANS ARE known for their sophisticated judo arsenals, Russians live and die by their fastballs. And Dartanyon was about to face Russia’s equivalent of Nolan Ryan. Oleg Kretsul was a hulking Eastern European brawler who moved with the stealth of a cat. He began his career as a sighted athlete, breaking onto the scene at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. A year later, he married, and one week after his wedding, he suffered a serious car crash. His new bride was killed in the accident, and Oleg lost both of his eyes. The accident forced him to rebuild his life and his judo career—now as a Paralympian. Oleg reemerged as the silver medalist in the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens and the gold medalist in the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing. He bore a resemblance to Shrek, with a square nose on a square head, planted atop square shoulders that could have doubled as bookshelves to hold his four world championship titles.