Land of Opportunity

Forget Michael Phelps, this might be the feel-good story of the Beijing Olympic Games. [Plus it's going to make Lou Dobbs' head explode.]

BEIJING, Aug. 19 -- The easy thing to do, when Henry Cejudo broke out in tears and wrapped himself in the American flag, would be to become engrossed in a maudlin tale about overcoming adversity, about how sports can change lives. In Cejudo's case, it would ring true, because his parents emigrated illegally from Mexico, his mother ran from his crime-addled father, he slept in the same bed as one of his siblings and Tuesday, he wrestled his way to an Olympic gold medal.

Cejudo will leave that on the mat, thank you, right where he left Japan's Tomohiro Matsunaga, the man he defeated to win freestyle wrestling's 55-kilogram weight class, taking the first two periods, one by tiebreaker, in the best-of-three match. Cejudo will take his gold medal. He will tell the story of how, at 21, he became the youngest Olympic wrestling champion in U.S. history. He will, however, take no sympathy.

"To me," Cejudo said, "I've always had everything."