By Vahe Gregorian, St. Louis Post-Dispatch –
If he has his way, Danell Leyva one day will be known for his drawing, musical, comedic, acting or culinary gifts. Or all of that. “My goal is to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony,” he said in June during the USA Gymnastics Championships at Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis.
That Grand Slam has been achieved only by 14 people. None bears the added distinction Leyva will strive for first: an Olympic gold medal. He’ll go after his first at the London Games, which commence with opening ceremonies on Friday.
However viable any of the other ambitions might be, Leyva, 20, undoubtedly is a serious contender for multiple medals as the defending world champion in parallel bars and winner of the all-around at the 2012 Olympic trials in San Jose.
Yet from his perspective, each enterprise is related.
“Gymnastics, especially what we’re doing, is called ‘artistic gymnastics’ for a reason; it’s an art form,” he said. “Yeah, you do it for the judges, and you try to do it to beat this guy, beat that guy. But at the end of the day, you’re just performing on a stage for the crowd.”
The other elements of his performance visions might seem lofty and improbable.
But none of that is as implausible as where he stands today, on the cusp of helping Team USA as it seeks its first team gold medal since 1984.
A rough start
When the Cuban-born Leyva was about a year old, he was suffering with severe asthma and unable to reliably get the medicine he needed, he said.
So Leyva’s mother, Maria Gonzalez, defected, whisking him and his older sister out of Cuba through Peru to Miami.
Moreover, Leyva’s ascension through the sport has been driven by the man who later became his coach and step-father, Yin Alvarez, whose own apparently unrelated defection was achieved by swimming from Mexico across the Rio Grande river.
As Leyva has heard the story, “He took off all his clothes, put them in a plastic bag and had to swim with it, like, in front. He said he was screaming so loud, because it was in December — (and) the river was freezing cold.”
Alvarez and Gonzalez connected in Miami, an unlikely prospect in itself because of differences they’d had at the National School of Gymnastics in Havana years before. (Alvarez and Gonzalez each was on the Cuban national team).
“Yin was infamous in the school, actually,” Leyva said. “He was a great gymnast, but as far as, like, behavior, mmmm not so much. My mom was the complete opposite; she always followed the rules and . . . they didn’t really like each other.”
That began to change, though, perhaps in part because of Danell, who has no recollection of meeting his biological father though he is in contact by telephone and computer.
When Alvarez came to their apartment, he seemed immediately to bond with Leyva, who on subsequent visits was so excited to see him that he remembered having to be held back, as if a puppy, from the glass entrance door.
“We connected right away, and it obviously hasn’t broken since then,” Leyva said. “And I don’t think it’s ever going to break.”
‘Don’t bring him back’
Their relationship might have been a natural, but Leyva was no natural at the sport, going so far as to suggest that his early chunkiness meant he “legitimately, literally, could not jump.
“My mom didn’t want me to be a gymnast for so many reasons: My arms were too long, my butt was too big, my feet were too flat,” he said, before smiling at his scan-button focus span and adding, “and I obviously didn’t pay attention.”
So much so, he said, that his first gymnastics teacher told Leyva’s mother: “I can’t deal with this kid. Please don’t bring him back.”
But Alvarez flipped a switch with him, beginning with bringing gymnastics videos to the apartment. Leyva remembered being hypnotized and thinking, “I don’t know what that is, but I want to do that.”
So what he lacked in aptitude he made up for with attitude.
“Whatever I did,” he said, “I did and did and did and did.”
Leyva was not yet 4 years old, and he’s been immersed in it — and mastering it — ever since, with the animated Alvarez always alongside.
In St. Louis, Alvarez could be heard between leaps and gesticulations and hugs hollering, “That’s my boy,” after various Leyva levitations.
“Literally everything I do is because of him,” Leyva said. “I’m just, like, his experiment. Like he’s the scientist and I’m, like, the project, you know? His work.”
And that, too, of his mother, who helps coach Leyva and run Universal Gymnastics in Miami.
“I get frustrated, flustered (and) she just helps me, like, breathe,” said Leyva, who considers himself a hybrid of the two. “Which is good, because I don’t want to be as crazy as Yin, and I don’t want to be as quiet and reserved as my mom.”
For that matter, Leyva never remembers wanting to be like anyone else.
“Like me,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to be like myself.”
