Born in Mexico, runner now carries U.S. Olympic dream
By JIM VERTUNO AP Sports Writer
Article Launched: 06/10/2008 01:42:29 PM MDT


AUSTIN, Texas—Leo Manzano runs with world-class speed in bursts of just under a mile, listening to the rhythm of his breathing and footfalls on the track.
He thinks about winning another NCAA championship, about making the U.S. Olympic team. And he thinks about his father.

Through hundreds of miles of tough Texas wilderness, Jesus Manzano's constant companions were the crunch of dirt under his boots and thoughts of how far he was going—from a no-prospects Mexican village to odd jobs on the fringes of the American economy so he could send money home.

Jesus walked for his family. By his early 20s, he had slipped across the border more than a dozen times.

Today, more than two decades later, Leo runs to win, yes, but also to honor his family.

"If he hadn't come to the U.S.," Manzano says of his father. "I probably wouldn't have even gone to high school."

Instead, he's a senior at the University of Texas, and at this week's NCAA championships he'll be chasing a second title in his signature 1,500 meters. It would be his fifth career national championship. Come July, he'll be at the Olympic trials in Oregon with a legitimate shot of competing in Beijing for his adopted homeland.


Leo was 12 years old and skinny strong when he knew he wanted to run.

Anything was better than cutting lawns and digging flower beds in the sweltering central Texas summer. If he was going to be this hot, he



might as well be having fun.
"What is that going to get you?" his father asked.

Who cares, Leo thought. It was better than work.

Leo's father was granted legal residency in the U.S. in 1987. To him, an education and a job that put food on the table were all that mattered. That's why he crossed the border 16 times, fording rivers even though he couldn't swim, walking all those miles tired, thirsty and hungry. Once as a rancher chased his group, he heard what sounded like gunfire.

Compared to all that, running for the fun of it seemed like folly.

Eventually the father relented—though he insisted that if the son were to run, he'd better be good.

Leo, now 23, has been that. At 5-foot-5, 125 pounds, he shares his father's short stature, but is big on determination.

He won nine Texas state high school championships to earn a scholarship with the Longhorns. At Texas, he has been dominant, with NCAA titles in the 1,500 meters, two in the mile and one as part of a relay team. He first ran for the U.S. as a surprise qualifier at last year's world championships in Japan, gaining valuable international experience but leaving without a medal.


Jesus Manzano was about 17 when he first stood at the banks of the Rio Grande and watched the water swirling dark and cold at his feet. On the opposite bank, the United States awaited.

Sinking to his waist, he churned ahead, fighting the current and his fear of drowning, concentrating on the mud and brush ahead of him—and the opportunities beyond.

He was crossing the border for the first time and the hard part was just beginning. Next came five days of walking. The scrub brush scratched his arms, dust choked his lungs and he shivered through cold nights. Food ran out after three days, so he and his companions hunted rabbits.

He was leaving a tiny farming village outside the central Mexico town of Dolores Hidalgo, the legendary cradle of Mexico's fight for independence from Spain in the early 1800s. There was little work to be found, and even less education. By coming to America, Jesus was following a trail cut by young men before him, his own father among them.

"That's how life was," Jesus said, using Leo as a translator in a recent interview which brought together Leo's parents, his two sisters and brother.

Short like Leo, Jesus is stocky and strong, with a firm handshake strengthened by years of hard labor. He's worked the last 18 years at an asphalt company—first shoveling gravel, now operating machinery—in Marble Falls, about an hour outside Austin.

Wearing a straw cowboy hat, jeans and a western style shirt that seems to deepen his tan, Jesus is a quiet talker who at first didn't quite understand why anyone would want to know his story.

"It was just something they had to do," Leo explained.

But while his wife, Maria, remains subdued and shies from questions, Jesus is quick with a smile when asked to recall his experiences. It seems as if he's not only relating the stories to a stranger, but teaching his children as well.

Jesus Manzano would spend months in the U.S. before periodic trips home. Once, in the Dallas area, an immigration agent knocked on his apartment door. Thinking his friends were playing a joke, he answered and quickly found himself being deported.

The Rio Grande remained his nemesis. During one crossing, the river was running high and he had to use a rubber raft. When a branch poked a hole in the side, Manzano held the puncture closed so the raft wouldn't sink and he wouldn't drown.

At first, his goal was to send some money back to his parents. Within a few years, it was to support a wife and a growing family living in a one-room adobe hut. They had no electricity and drinking, cooking or bathing required shouldering five-gallon jugs from a village .

Leo was born in 1984. Soon he was joined by Laura, Jesus and Maria's oldest daughter. The family's big break came in 1986 when a federal amnesty law allowed Jesus to apply for legal residency. Maria crossed the Rio Grande herself. When he was 4, Leo and his sister were driven across the border by friends already living in the U.S. who posed as their parents. Two more Manzano children were later born in Texas.

It would take about 10 years for the government to grant the entire family U.S. residency.

Leo Manzano became a U.S. citizen in 2004 and last year qualified for the world championships with a surprising second place in the 1,500 at the U.S. championships, finishing just ahead of two-time Olympic medalist and American record holder Bernard Lagat.

The world meet offered a hard lesson that international distance running can be a cutthroat, contact sport. Manzano was only a few meters into his first race when another runner popped him with a hard elbow to the chest.

Each time he tried to make a move, another elbow, bump or shove knocked him back. He didn't qualify for the final, which Lagat won.

It wasn't exactly crossing the Rio Grande and trudging through the wilderness, but it was tough and Leo wasn't up the challenge.

"Those guys are claws and teeth," Manzano said.

He's a wiser and better runner because of his loss. But if he doesn't make the Olympics, he'll have plenty to fall back on. Where his father only finished grade school, Leo is scheduled to graduate from Texas in the fall and hopes eventually to work in international business.

His parents have taken the family back to Mexico several times to show them their old home, to see their roots and to be thankful for what they have.

Leo knows that in a different life, that could have been him.

"I'm 23 and I feel helpless when I have to take a final exam," Leo said. "They were worried about life."





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