BEIJING — Inside an authentic Mexican restaurant, the mariachi band played "Guantanamera" while the one-man melting pot walked inside. "Hola," Larry Langowski said. Skip to next paragraph
Only at the Olympics could one expect to find an athlete like Langowski, a self-described Polexican — part Polish, part Mexican — who lives in Chicago, runs the family-owned Italian gelato cafe and is the sole member of the Mexican wrestling team: four cultures blended into one man. He was on his way into a Mexican restaurant that serves an Olympic parrillada: a combination of chicken, beef, chorizo, cheese, fried fish, fresh shrimp and refried beans, served with corn tortillas.
"Taste delicious taco, feel real Olympic," the menu says. The one-man melting pot is feeling real Olympic these days. He lives in the Olympic Village. He eats in the spacious dining hall. He hopes to run into the American softball player Jennie Finch. Maybe he can explain to her just how he got here, just what he represents.
"I'm the product of different cultures," Langowski said, finishing off a bowl of tortilla soup. "I've been to a lot of cool places, done a lot of cool things. That all pretty much mixes into who I am."
He can say grandma in three languages. He speaks fluent English and Spanish. At Heavenly, the cafe where his family serves eight types of gelato in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, people mistake him for Italian, even Greek. At Mexican restaurants back home, waitresses ask if he is Cuban after he orders in Spanish.
People gravitate to his story because it seems humorous. (So this Polish guy from Chicago who makes up the Mexican wrestling team walked into a bar. ...)
But there is another story about how he became the melting pot, about how he ended up at these Olympics, wearing a fanny pack with a Mexican flag on it.
"People never tell that part," Langowski said. "My whole story sometimes throws people off. There's stuff in there that doesn't fit in a box. I guess I confuse people."
Langowski, 23, arrived here Aug. 7, with two weeks to kill before the 120-kilogram qualifications in the freestyle wrestling competition started Thursday. Before losing his first match to Fardin Masoumi of Iran, Langowski spent a lot of time reflecting on his journey.
Growing up in Chicago, his mother, Maria, often forced him to speak to her in Spanish. She would take him on trips to Mexico City, and each time, she said her relatives were amazed at what the boy knew about their culture.
"It is a very rich culture," she said. "It was very important that he learned it."
His father, also Lawrence, calls his son Junior, and he still remembers the first time Junior wrestled. In a takedown tournament at the beginning of high school, without so much as a pair of wrestling shoes, Junior took a state champion and tossed him to the ground. The other boy bounced up. Junior threw him down a second time, then a third and a fourth.
Those wrestling skills led Langowski to Northwestern. While on a summer break from college in 2004, he traveled to Mexico City. He inquired with the Mexican wrestling team if there was a place he could work out.
The people there asked him to compete in a tournament instead, and when Langowski nearly beat one of their top wrestlers, they asked him if he would compete internationally, on the spot. If only the rest of his story went that smoothly.
Back at Northwestern in 2005, Langowski tore a knee ligament. After months of rehabilitation, he wrestled for Mexico in the 2005 world championships, and during his sophomore and junior seasons at Northwestern.
The injury essentially ended his collegiate wrestling career and eventually led to reconstructive surgery. He was cut from the Northwestern team after he thought he had been promised a fifth year of eligibility. "A nightmare," his father said.
Langowski continued to compete for Mexico, but found it difficult to navigate two worlds, especially while competing for a country he did not live in. He served as his own travel agent. His family collected $40,000 for training expenses. Just finding a suitable training partner led him to Olympic training centers in Colorado Springs and in Canada.
Meanwhile, the gelato cafe struggled. Langowski took over while his father went back to school to study Chinese acupuncture.
In the Olympic Village the past two weeks, he thought back on all of that.
"I'm here, you know," he said. "That's a huge accomplishment in itself."
He is here, the first Mexican wrestler in the last three Olympics. He is here, after his family threw a party back at Heavenly for several hundred people the day before he left. His mother hired a mariachi band, invited his sixth-grade teacher and professors from Northwestern, decked out the whole place in red, white and green balloons.
He is here, after 36 hours of travel from Mexico City, after waiting for 196 nations to walk before Mexico at the opening ceremony. He is here, the product of so many countries and so many people and so many experiences — the one-man melting pot.
"The coolest thing about the Olympics is not always Michael Phelps," Langowski said. "Sometimes, it's about how you got there."
Jehad Hamdan knows exactly what Langowski means. He tried to represent Palestine in the 2004 Olympics but did not qualify. He trained with Langowski for the past four years. The other night Hamdan sent Langowski a text message that read, "You're proof that dreams do come true."
"There is no question, he is the epitome of the Olympics," Hamdan said. "He is the Olympic dream personified."
Back at the authentic Mexican restaurant, the one-man melting pot just smiled, as the mariachi band played on.
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Founded in 1939 as a three-team league in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Little League Baseball encouraging local volunteers to organize and operate Little League programs for which they were leased annually by Little League Baseball International.