Henry Cejudo - Did you know?

The typical route to the Olympics for wrestlers is to pay their dues on the college mats for four or five years, then begin climbing the international ladder rung by rung. Jake Deitchler and Henry Cejudo aren’t typical. Deitchler, 18, just graduated from high school in Minnesota. Cejudo, 21, bypassed college wrestling after his sensational high school career. Both are Beijing-bound after winning spots at the U.S. Olympic trials. 1

Still wearing his singlet after a draining practice here recently, Henry Cejudo found a floor mat and commenced a meticulous ab workout, huffing during each crunch of his stomach, one already worthy of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad. It was almost as if he wanted the pain. 2

That would be fine with Cejudo, who will be the No. seed in his weight class this weekend at the world team trials in Las Vegas. Henson has missed time with a knee injury, leaving a hole in the weight division that only Cejudo seems ready to fill. At 5′ 4″, he is a compact mass of muscle and focused aggression. Since he began wrestling in junior high, he has thought of little else but winning world and Olympic championships. Indeed, he is obsessed with those goals, driven by a desire to prove himself to the world, as well as to a father he never really knew. 4

Rare is the wrestler who’s featured in Sports Illustrated — especially prior to winning an Olympic medal, a world title, or earning his right to purchase an alcoholic beverage. But rare is the talent of Henry Cejudo. 5

Cejudo (pronounced say-HOO-doh) is a prodigy of the sort rarely found in the U.S. freestyle program, which typically �doesn’t get its hands on wrestlers until they’ve completed their college careers. He burst onto the international scene in November 2005 while still a senior in high school, winning the New York Athletic Club Holiday International after defeating ‘04 NCAA champion Jason Powell of Nebraska in the quarterfinals and dominating junior world champion Besik Kudukhov of Russia in the semis. Five months later Cejudo became the first high schooler to win a senior national championship since USA Wrestling became the sport’s governing body in 1983. “He is the future of wrestling,” says U.S. freestyle head coach Kevin Jackson. 3