Soon, Esparza was back in a regular high school, where she took up cross-country, swimming and volleyball to improve her conditioning. When her parents divorced, she remained with her father so she could continue training with Silva. After she won her first national title at 16, Silva encouraged her to join the debate team so she would be better with the media. She graduated from high school as class president with a high GPA, but put off attending college at Rice University to continue her training.
Her grueling schedule has paid off; she has only lost twice to U.S. opponents, once when she was 12 and once to Christina Cruz, her toughest foe, in 2011. Each time, she retooled. "From the first loss to Johanna Mendez, I learned to train harder," she says. "From the second loss to Christina Cruz, I learned to fight smarter."
During training, which is six days a week (down from seven after a trainer convinced Silva the body needs a day of rest to get stronger), Esparza gets up early to swim and work on strength training. Lunch is pork loin or chicken breast and vegetables (she put on six pounds of muscle to move up to the 112-pound class, the lowest for women boxers). Then, she often naps. Silva meets her at the gym at the Fellowship of Nations in Houston, where she began training last year after the gym they started at more than a decade ago closed. She jumps rope, hits the bags and spars under his watchful eye. Later, she goes for a run of anywhere from a mile to four miles.
Esparza punched her ticket to London by winning the U.S. Olympic trials, going undefeated and beating Washington D.C.'s Tyriesha Douglas, 32-17, in the final. Then she had to finish as the highest flyweight at the world championships in China in May where eight boxers from the weight class earned automatic Olympic berths. She started fast, defeating Argentina's Paola Benavidez, 20-10, in the first round before downing Vietnam's teenage phenom, Luu Thi Duyen, 28-13. But her win streak stopped when Esparza dropped a 16-8 decision to Ren Cancan of China, the eventual world champion now ranked number one among flyweights.
Like other losses, Esparza says she learned from this one and will come back stronger. She's been boxing internationally since she was 16, so she knows her opponents well. She’s taken to listening to hymns lately as part of her pre-fight routine.
She wants to be calm, dissecting her opponents, always thinking, always seeking the peace of mind that will let her do her best. "In order to seek calmness, you have to try and outsmart your opponent and not just throw punches aimlessly," she adds.
"In London, I will have to beat [Cancan] by fighting a smarter fight and have a more technical approach," she says. "When I fought her in China, I had already qualified for London so mentally I was not the same as I was in the other rounds. This time I will be more mentally prepared."
This feature is courtesy of Smithsonian.com, our content partner in bringing you everything you'll want to know about the Summer Olympic Games, and is part of its Guide to the Games report.
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4 Comments
Add CommentBoxing is an abomination. Women's boxing is the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a nice story about a fine young woman athlete, but why is it appropriate fodder for Scientific American?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is interesting to see the athlete refer to Olympic boxing as an intellectual exercise - that is essentially what is has become since the atrocious 'computerized' scoring system was implemented in an attempt to prevent a repeat of blatantly biased scoring by Korean judges in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_boxing explains:
"Computer scoring was introduced to the Olympics in 1992. Each of the five judges has a keypad with a red and a blue button. The judges must press a button for which ever corner they feel lands a scoring blow. Three out of the five judges must press the button for the same boxer within a one-second window in order for the point to score."
IMO, some of the most grievous problems with this system are that most punches cannot be seen by all judges, all judges cannot press their button within one second, and many punches can land in just a few seconds. As a result, most landed punches are not counted, making results unreliable. Moreover, by rule, a legally landed punch should be counted as one point whether it's a slight touch, a solid punch or a knockdown. As a result, amateur boxing has become fencing with gloves.
I understand that significant rule changes are planned for the 2016 Olympics that will hopefully return 'real' boxing to the Olympics.
Again, per Wikipedia:
"... The AIBA [International Boxing Assoc.] has introduced a new scoring system in January 2012. Each judge gives an individual score for each boxer. The score given to each boxer would be taken from 3 out of 5 judges either by similar score or trimmed mean. Scores are no longer tracked in real time and are instead given at the end of each round."
A Google search of "boxing brain damage scientificamerican.com" (without quotes) turns up a few results, but I'm not sure one can believe them--these days scientificamerican.com has many articles that don't really seem scientific to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll boxing is an abomination, are there that many people who think women use chiffon pillows when they box? You stated the point clearly, why take a separate stab at women's boxing? Besides, we have football and hockey, and since there is/are no concussion problems/violence in those sports, I guess we get rid of boxing? Are wars different? I'd say those are greater abominations than boxing, or rape, or child abuse, now there is something everyone can agree is more of an abomination than boxing.
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