In this year of the American Olympics, Rene Capo - Cuban emigre, former Gophers nose guard, retired judo champion - is the epitome of an American Olympian.
'My whole career has been comebacks,' said Capo, who this week could become the first Minnesotan to be named to the 1996 U.S. Olympic team.
Beginning Friday in Colorado Springs, Capo will confront a steep, uphill battle at the Olympic judo trials.
Motivated by a few fighting words that resonate four years later and pushed by that undefined but ubiquitous 'Olympic dream,' Capo will step on the mat knowing he needs to win seven matches over two days to get the only 209-pound spot on the U.S. team.
'I've just got to have a couple of good days,' said Capo, 34.
Capo returned to international judo last August after a self-imposed, 3 1/2-year hiatus. Oh, he had kept his 6-foot, 210 pound body in rippled shape as he worked for a health club and exercise machine company. But, the sport that he mastered as a little boy in Florida after his parents fled Cuba in 1962 seemed a thing of the past.
Problem was, the past was a tad bitter. Capo harbored unresolved Olympic aspirations.
The roots of Capo's march towards the Atlanta Games can be traced to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, to his first comeback.
Making the '88 U.S. team was extraordinary. Capo long had dominated youth judo competitions in Hialeah, Fla., and nationally. But, after earning a University of Minnesota football scholarship in 1979, he set the Japanese 'wrestling with a uniform' sport aside . . . for seven years.
In 1986, he returned to the martial art. He made the U.S. team for the Seoul Games. 'That was my dream,' he said recently, sitting in the kitchen of his southwest Minneapolis home.
But he lost his first Olympic match to eventual 189-pound bronze-medalist Ben Spijkers of the Netherlands. Capo led during most of the 5-minute contest.
Last February, Capo was talking with some of his judo friends when one said of the Spijkers' defeat, 'Rene, you almost won. You were winning.'
The words revived Capo's Olympic spirit. He got to thinking of Atlanta.
After all, he had overcome much.
Such as in 1990, when he was competing in (he won a silver medal) and working for (in marketing) the Twin Cities U.S. Olympic Festival. Capo and fellow judo player John Hobales got into an auto accident in Roseville while driving an official Festival car. No one was hurt, but they were arrested for drunken driving, fined and forced into treatment.
'A nightmare,' Capo said. 'I wanted to crawl under a rock. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would. But you can't. I learned from it.'
There was another comeback during the 1992 Olympic trials, the same event he is preparing for today.
Capo was the 1991 national champion at 209 pounds, ranked above longtime national and world contender Leo White. White, in fact, defeated Capo in the Festival.
But in July 1991, six months before the trials, Capo suffered a ruptured disk in his neck. He required surgery, a fusion, and was sidelined until October.
When the trials came, Capo said, 'Physically, mentally I felt I was there, but I was hesitant. You know, I'd just had my neck fused.'
White beat Capo in the trials, pushing Capo into retirement. But White, an aggressive, win-at-all-costs judo player, uttered some words that Capo still remembers. 'You weren't like you were before,' Capo remembers White telling him, seemingly rubbing in the defeat.
'He didn't mean to be mean,' Capo said recently. 'But what he said really ticked me off. I've been thinking about those words for the past 3 1/2 years.'
And, so, the Spijkers defeat, White's words and the '96 Olympics on U.S. soil added up to push Capo to this week, this chance, one more Olympic trials.
The costs? At least $15,000. Once Capo decided to get back into the U.S. judo mix, he took a leave from NordicTrack, where he had been a sales representative. He travelled to the judo nationals in Dallas. He went to competitions in Scandinavia to earn qualifying points that now have him ranked as the fifth-best U.S. competitor at 209 pounds. He went to Canada to train with its top judo players.
He's selling T-shirts, sweatshirts and caps to raise money. He has maxed-out his credit cards. He is nursing a sore left knee.
'Does it make me nervous?' said Capo, who has a degree in business administration. 'I've always been able to make money. If it takes me a year, a year-and-a-half, two years to come out of it, well, this is something I want to do. To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd still be doing this at 34. But I want to reach another level. And I do it knowing this is definitely the last time.'
If he gets past three other Olympic aspirants Friday, he will advance to face the top-ranked 209-pounder. He will have to beat the top-seeded player Friday, then twice Saturday to get to Atlanta.
The No. 1 guy? Leo White.
