Two flags and two fists, Jennifer Lozano's 2024 Olympic quest

JENNIFER LOZANO IS HOME. It has been about 18 hours since she left Santiago, Chile, where she finished second at the 2023 Pan American Games. Now, traveling from Santiago, through Atlanta and then Houston, she has returned to Laredo, Texas, as the city's first homegrown Olympian.

As soon as the plane lands, one of Lozano's coaches, Michelle Vela, sends her a message: "There's a lot of people here."

Lozano reads it and responds, not giving it much thought: "Alright, cool."

She figures there might be a dozen well-wishers in the airport. For sure some family, probably a few friends and maybe a local reporter.

"I'm just letting you know so you don't freak out," Michelle adds.

She and her husband, Eddie -- who also coaches Lozano -- know Jennifer better than just about anyone else. They know when she gets nervous, she talks a lot. They know the Olympics is something she has chased for years. And since she has come home with her biggest win, they know she'll want to celebrate by eating chicken alfredo at the nearby Olive Garden.

From her arrival gate, Lozano walks beneath Laredo International Airport's bilingual signs. When she turns the corner to take the stairs down to the lobby, whistles, claps and cheers erupt from those who've gathered. There are more people here than she imagined. It's family, friends, old coaches, former teachers and, since Laredo's on the U.S.-Mexico border, it's media from both sides of the river with two names -- the Rio Grande in Texas, the Rio Bravo in Mexico. Even the mayor and other local politicians are here. Other travelers walk toward the crowd out of curiosity -- some joining the celebration -- and in the end there are hundreds who welcome Jennifer Lozano home.

"Oh my God," she thinks to herself. "No way this is happening."

She worries she'll start to sweat and tells herself to stay calm, but nervous energy has her skipping down the stairs. The Pan Am Games silver medal swings from her neck and across her shirt where her initials and nickname -- La Traviesa ; the troublemaker -- are written on the front. The band from her old high school breaks into the theme from "Rocky." Lozano smiles a big smile. It feels like a movie.

It always feels good to come home, but this time feels different. In the past few years, Lozano has returned from fighting for the U.S. national boxing team in places as far away as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Germany and Ecuador. Places she read about in school but never thought she'd see. Places she'd return from and there'd only be a couple of people welcoming her home. She has had great success, but there have been times when she has felt overlooked along the way, either because she's a woman, or from Laredo, or both. Of course, until now, she hadn't been an Olympian.

After hugs and handshakes, smiles and pictures, thank-you's and quick interviews, several people give speeches, some mixing English and Spanish. Laredo mayor Victor D. Trevino proclaims today, October 29, 2023, as Jennifer "La Traviesa" Lozano Day. Her former principal says she has made everyone proud. Her mom thanks everyone for their support, and Eddie yells "We're going to Paris!"

"It's been a long road," Lozano tells the crowd. Her voice is amplified by the microphone and hides how uncomfortable she feels as the center of attention. She's just 21 years old but she has been chasing her Olympic dream for over half of her life. It has been a difficult road too, she says, scattered with the potholes of doubts and losses. And she has been on it so long that once what she imagined became real -- being handed a literal golden ticket reading, "You're going to Paris 2024" -- she almost fainted.

"Being from somewhere where no one had ever done it was hard," Lozano continues.

People in the crowd nod as she speaks. They know sometimes when you go out past familiar places, you can't help but feel doubt. Out there, where no one near you has been, is where excitement and fear live side by side.

In Jennifer Lozano, they see a reflection of who they are and where they come from.

IT'S EARLY MARCH now, about 5:30 in the morning and Lozano has finished a 4-mile run through one of Laredo's main streets. It's quiet. The cool breeze is full of moisture and though it's supposed to reach 93 degrees, right now it feels perfect. If all you knew about the border is what's shown on the national news and movies, you'd be surprised by how peaceful everything feels.

"We usually do 5 miles, sometimes 6, but today we're trying to take care of our feet," Michelle says. She and Lozano run together.

Michelle was born in Laredo too. Then she moved to Los Angeles until her father got sick. She was 15 when she returned. It was a culture shock. "Everybody was so touchy-feely," Michelle says of Laredo. "Everybody was kissing on the cheek. It was awkward, but friendly, very family-oriented."

They run hours before the South Texas sun bakes the air. Before traffic and the city's more than 256,000 people fill the streets on their way to work, to school and across the river, back and forth across two countries and between two Laredos.

Of the United States' 1951 miles of southern border, half of it -- a whopping 1254 miles -- is in Texas. And in Texas, all the borders are marked by the Rio Grande. Here, the river twists and turns so the separation isn't just north from south, but also east from west, there's Nuevo Laredo in Mexico, and Laredo in Texas. Like all border cities, the two Laredos -- or "los dos Laredos," as they're called here -- exist in the shadow of indifference from their respective state and federal governments. Not quite Mexico, not quite the U.S., but an in-between place.

And yet, because of their location, $320 billion worth of trade came through the two Laredos last year. (The majority of the goods are auto parts.) There is so much trade that there is an agreement between Texas and Mexico to double the size of one of the international bridges from eight to sixteen lanes in the coming years. And, because the vast majority of those goods just pass through, there's a proposal to build another highway out of Laredo. Laredo's population is 95% Latinx -- mostly of Mexican heritage -- and the poverty rate is almost 10 percentage points higher than the rest of the United States. With rising temperatures and Texas' extended droughts, the city is projected to run out of water by 2040.

"A lot of people leave and never come back," Lozano says. So old the city was founded decades before this country. So isolated it once served as the capital of a short-lived nation. The white, red and black flag of what was the Republic of the Rio Grande still hangs outside its former headquarters, a building a few blocks from the river and a few miles from the street where Lozano sold bottled water for gas money so she could travel to fight in tournaments.

"When I was a kid, I used to think Laredo was the world," she says. Back then she couldn't imagine what was out past the limits of what has become the country's largest inland port. Out where it's mostly open land between the giant warehouses. As she talks, she lifts the toes of her right foot off the ground to stretch its muscles and tendons.

"I have plantar fasciitis on both feet," she explains. Her running shoes have custom-made insoles so expensive she wouldn't have them if the national team didn't provide them. When she's at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado, trainers tape her feet before runs and physical therapists help her recover when she's done.

It's different when she's home.

"Out here, I don't have the resources," she says. "I just have to be extra cautious and make do with what I have."

JENNIFER LOZANO IS HUNGRY. There's no metaphor here.

Her hair's wet from a shower following her morning run. After eating a Greek yogurt, she rests on the couch in the living room of the Velas' home while drinking a Gatorade Zero. To maximize focus, whenever she trains for a tournament or, in this case, the Olympics, she stays with Michelle and Eddie.

Her hunger's nothing new. To be a boxer is to make peace with discomfort. Sometimes it's a punch to the face. Other times it's running on sore feet. Right now, it's the most pressing of pains: a growling stomach. Lozano can't afford to weigh much more than her preferred fighting weight of 110 pounds.

"I grew up as a chubby kid, definitely skipped 110," Lozano says. "I was so insecure about my body," she continues, remembering how even in the South Texas heat she'd wear sweaters with a long-sleeve shirt underneath to hide it.

When the national team finally called -- so unexpected she thought it was a scam -- she'd been fighting at 119 pounds. Since opponents in her weight class were taller, she was giving up too many physical advantages, especially reach. The national coaches told her that to have any shot at the Olympics she had to fight at 110 pounds.

"Screw it," she said. "I'm going to do whatever it takes."

Lozano stays hungry, so the weight cuts aren't as painful as they once were. She used to sprint while wearing a sauna suit, then sit in a car with the windows closed and the heater at its hottest setting. All on an empty stomach. There were times she felt like she'd pass out.

"If I ever got sponsored by Whataburger, man, it would be crazy," she laughs. Of all the food she can't eat during training, the burgers are what she misses the most. She'll eat Whataburger every time she's in Laredo and doesn't have to watch her weight. "But only here," she adds.

LOZANO GLIDES ACROSS the ring in a Laredo gym a few hours from where the Rio Grande ends. She wears a white, long-sleeve shirt with the U.S. flag on one side and the Mexican flag on the other. She punches at something not there; in the same way she has spent most of her life chasing the unimaginable. There are 142 days until the Olympics begin. She warms up as Eddie watches.

He still remembers the first time she walked into his gym where, every day, about 60 children and adults train. He remembers how she wore baggy basketball shorts and a tank top with a T-shirt underneath that went down to her knees. She'd been training at another gym, going there since she was getting bullied as a kid for being overweight and -- since contradictions exist everywhere -- for only speaking Spanish. After a few months, she wanted to fight. The trainer there told her no. He said fighting wasn't for girls. Lozano's mom looked around and found the Velas' gym.

"She just came in and said, 'I want to fight,''' Eddie says. She was just 9 years old.

He started working with her as he does with anyone who wants to box. First, he teaches the basics. How to step forward and back, side to side, all while never dropping the hands below the chin or crossing the feet. The things you can't teach come next: to fight without being afraid. Some kids say they want to fight and then get punched in the mouth, taste blood and never return. Others get punched and return for payback. After that comes technique. And since it's what he knew from when he fought -- his professional career ended when he was 22 years old after a motorcycle accident in 1996 -- Eddie taught Lozano the Mexican style of boxing.

At its most effective, the Mexican style systematically breaks down opponents. First come the body shots. Punches to the kidney, lungs, stomach and especially the liver make it hard for the opponent to breathe. They'll feel like they're drowning. There are only so many body punches they can take before the hands drop. The chin gets exposed, then it's time to work on it. To practice the Mexican style is to be a fighter.

With natural talent and desire and everything Eddie taught her, Lozano learned quickly. She's a southpaw, which adds to the difficulty of facing her. Before long, boys in the gym didn't want to fight her. When no one in Laredo could beat Lozano, she crossed the river to fight in Nuevo Laredo. Soon after, she and the Velas would drive to bigger cities looking for competition. On the road for hours, talking boxing and how they came from the same place, their connection grew.

Eddie sees Jennifer as a daughter, the fifth of his four children. She sees him as a father figure. He calls her Jenny and keeps a copy of a 2017 article from the local newspaper framed in his office because it mentions their dreams of making the Olympics. He recently had a dream about her winning gold. He hasn't told her because he's afraid to jinx it.

"It's weird because things are coming true," Eddie says of their goals. "Look," he tells me, lifting his forearm to show me the goosebumps.

After a few rounds, Eddie gets in the ring. Whenever Lozano returns from training with the national team, it takes them a few days to find the rhythm between their Mexican style and the more meticulous Olympic one she has learned training with the national team in Colorado. It has been difficult for Eddie to let go. To sit in his gym in Laredo and watch her fight on a stream from some faraway place. To no longer be the sole voice in her corner.

"I'm always there to watch her, to protect her, and not just in the ring," Eddie says. "But I guess now we're heading towards a bigger stage."

He wears the mitts, Lozano wears the gloves, and they begin to work. "My fault," she says after missing a combination they've practiced for years. In another instance, Eddie steps in the wrong direction. A few rounds later and they're back to moving as one.

The sun has set. The temperature has dropped. The gym's adult class has ended and the last of the stragglers who stayed a few minutes to see an Olympian train -- the one whose photos, trophies, medals and name are all over the gym along with her golden ticket to Paris, framed and hanging from a door -- are also gone. The documentary crew following Lozano on her Olympic journey isn't there either.

It's just Jenny and Eddie, the way it has been for years.

THERE ARE TWO SIDES of Jennifer Lozano.

There's the young woman who grew up in Laredo, Texas, and the young woman who spent just as much time in Mexico, across the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo. There's the Lozano who loves her home, and the Lozano who wishes she could escape its legacy of machismo and the doubt that accompanies it. The Lozano who fights for the U.S. Olympic team but also represents the Mexican part of who she is.

"I take being Mexican American with pride and honor," she says. "I represent every Mexican kid out there who was always told no."

Sometimes she thinks in Spanish and sometimes translates it to English when she speaks. She is most comfortable at home where life is split between two countries and cultures, but she also loves to be someone who now travels all around the world. Not long ago, she couldn't imagine anything past the Texas-Mexico perimeter and the Border Patrol checkpoints surrounding it.

"In Dallas and Houston, I would see buildings and I'd be like, 'Oh my god, I didn't know these parts of Texas even existed,'" Lozano says. "Then I would go out of the state and see bigger things."

There's a part of her that is naturally shy and doesn't want to draw attention, and a part who will sit in dressing rooms before fights and give a death stare to opponents. She is kind outside the ring and ruthless inside of it, taking it personally that anyone would even dare to fight her.

"They're going to see why people fear me, why they call me the troublemaker," Lozano says of her opponents.

She knows she has already accomplished something remarkable, and she hopes it will inspire her community. She can't wait to get to Paris but doesn't want to do much sightseeing because she's there to fight. She's proud to have gotten this far, but she'll be disappointed if she doesn't win gold.

"I'm sacrificing so much, I'm doing everything I can, I've accomplished so much, so why not me?" Lozano asks. "Because I'm from a small town? Because I'm a girl? No. I'm going to show you why me."

LOZANO GLIDES ACROSS the ring in a Colorado Springs gym a few hours from where the Rio Grande starts. She wears a black, long-sleeve shirt with "United States" written on the back. She punches at something not there, though, training inside the U.S. national boxing team's gym, she's as close to reaching her goal of Olympic gold as she has ever been. She and her seven other Olympic boxing team members warm up. There are 42 days until the Olympics begin, and Billy Walsh, the U.S. team coach, walks around the gym.

"They were the best team in the world," Walsh explains. "They had flair. They had style. They had charisma. They had physicality. They were in the best shape. They really looked like superstars." Then something changed and the national team's dominance diminished drastically.

Walsh says boxers started to focus on turning professional as fast as they could, bypassing the Olympics which brought with it valuable experience of facing the best boxers from each country. When USA boxing hired Walsh as head coach in 2015, the program was so low the gym had just one ring and six heavy bags; something a small local gym would have. As part of rebuilding the U.S. boxing program, Walsh rebuilt the gym where he now walks around until he stops in front of Lozano and watches.

"She doesn't realize it, but she has some really good boxing skill," Walsh says of Lozano. "She's not just a fighter, she is a boxer."

A boxer is someone who employs the most basic but difficult principle inside the ring: to hit and not get hit. A boxer uses the jab to control the distance between herself and the opponent, and by extension, the tempo of the fight. Boxers frustrate opponents. They make you feel as if the fight is slipping away and you've yet to land a meaningful punch. Eventually, the opponent will be forced to take a risk. When they do, the boxer will counterpunch and then move before getting hit.

"It's what I've been trying to get out of her the last number of years," Walsh says of Lozano. Trying to convert a fighter into a boxer isn't unique to her, but Walsh says it seems to happen most often with those from Texas. Counting Lozano, three of the eight members of the 2024 U.S. Olympic boxing team are from the Lone Star State.

"You could fight a Texan in a telephone booth," Walsh explains. "But the ring is 24 feet by 24 feet. You got to be able to move and box."

After a few rounds, Walsh and Lozano are in the same ring. Whenever she returns from training with Eddie in Laredo, it takes her a few days to get used to the thin air in Colorado Springs. Laredo is about 450 feet above sea level, Colorado Springs is just past 6,000 feet above. Until her body gets used to it, her head will hurt from the high elevation. Once she has acclimated, it'll only hurt because of the hunger.

Walsh wears the mitts, Lozano wears the gloves and they begin to work. Some boxers yell with each punch, others groan and some exhale a violent breath that sounds like air escaping from a punctured tire. Lozano doesn't make much noise. The sounds of her punches come from her gloves exploding against their target.

"Shorten your hook," Walsh says. He wants her to tighten her form, so she doesn't overextend herself, lose balance and get exposed to a counterpunch.

"Good, good," he says.

"Step back then throw," he says. He wants her to box more since women's amateur fights last just three rounds, and the short time demands she hit and not get hit.

"Yes! Yes! Again, again."

Lozano repeats it and Walsh shouts with excitement.

"That's it! That's it!" His voice and Irish accent echo across the gym.

He thinks maybe they've broken her instinct to be a fighter. Perhaps, after nearly five years of working together, Walsh has finally convinced Lozano she's at her best as a boxer.

JENNIFER LOZANO IS HUNGRY -- there's a metaphor here -- and it keeps her awake.

During the many nights when she struggles to sleep, she will sometimes read or write in her journal. Other times she'll pace around her room or stare at the ceiling as she lays on the bed of her dorm room at the Olympic training center. She'll sometimes think about the things she has lost. Outside the ring, it's the loss of her grandmother. They'd watch boxing together and her grandmother is the one who gave Lozano the nickname and confidence to think she could be anything she wanted. "I grew up with my mom and my grandma," Lozano says. "My dad was always working."

She thinks of how she grew up going back and-forth across the river. Thinks of how her grandmother never saw her fight for the U.S. national team. Thinks of how her grandmother died alone in her Nuevo Laredo home after she heard gunshots, went to lock the door, fell and hit her head. "I found her body days later," Lozano says. She thinks of how, for months after, she felt angry and depressed and like she'd lost her way.

Other times she thinks of the losses inside the ring. Some of them made her question who she was as a boxer. "Who am I really?" Lozano asked herself. "I'm just a girl from a small border town not even on the map." She wondered if everything she sacrificed was worth the effort. If she should listen to those who told her to get a job or go to college instead.

She remembers, too, that it was a loss in the semifinals of a national tournament that helped her see that the things she wanted could be within reach. To motivate herself, she'd use her grandmother's memory and the desire to make her mother proud. "It's going to be worth it. It's going to be worth it. It's going to be worth it." She repeated the words to herself in the dark of those nights when hunger kept her awake.

Now, when she can't sleep in her dorm in Colorado Springs -- almost a thousand miles away from home -- she thinks of how she got from there to here. How, not long ago, on sleepless nights she'd write, "I am a gold medalist, I am a gold medalist, I am a gold medalist," for however many journal pages it took to tame whatever self-doubt she felt. She thinks of how she's so close to what she has chased for a dozen years.

"I've been dreaming of this," Lozano says. "I've been wishing for this for as long as I can remember."

IT'S ABOUT 10:30 in the morning and Lozano has finished her workout at the Olympic training center. Outside the gym, it's quiet across the 35-acre grounds. Colorado Springs' cool grass and ponderosa pines leave the air smelling sweet.

Between her second and third daily workout, Lozano has a few hours to rest. Sometimes she'll take a nap, but more often she'll read or write in her journal until it's time for strength training at two in the afternoon. After training, because every ounce of water adds to her weight, she'll sit in the sauna. Then she'll shower, attempt to relax and hope to get a good night's sleep.

Every day, six days a week, until the Olympics begin, she and her teammates follow the same routine. They won't return home until the Games have ended.

"We're more focused when we're out here because we don't have a choice," Jajaira Gonzalez says. She's also a member of the 2024 U.S. Olympic boxing team. She's from Glendora, California, and she and Lozano are close. They've known each other since 2022. Whenever Lozano fights, she'll hand her bracelet to Gonzalez to wear. They have similar tattoos of the Olympic rings; Lozano's is on her right arm, beside her bicep, and Gonzalez has hers on her right leg, above the knee.

"She's like my little sister," Gonzalez says. Lozano is six years younger. "We fight like sisters. She annoys me. I annoy her. We push each other." Their friendship is strong now, but it wasn't always. "When we first met, she actually hated me," Gonzalez says.

That day, Gonzalez came to the gym a few days later than the rest of the team because she was recovering from COVID-19. When she arrived straight from the airport, she had her eyelashes on and wore makeup. It didn't sit right with Lozano, feeling as though Gonzalez was more focused on looking good than boxing. Even though Gonzalez outweighs her by about 20 pounds and is several inches taller, Lozano asked her to spar. They fought. Neither of them backed down and their relationship grew from there. "We started to talk and we just bonded," Gonzalez says.

Even though they're from two very different places, part of their bond is being Mexican American and communicating in two languages. When Lozano doesn't know how to say a word in English, she'll ask Gonzalez. When Gonzalez doesn't know how to say a word in Spanish, she'll ask Lozano. When she first got to Colorado Springs and felt alone, hearing Spanish brought Lozano a sense of home. It helped bridge the two sides of who she is even if sometimes it took a while to align the experiences of being in each place.

"My first time out here we were outside on the grass for strength and conditioning," Lozano says. "I heard a helicopter, and I was like, 'Oh my god, la migra , what the f---- is going on?' I started looking everywhere. No one else was freaking out." The strength coach, Jose Polanco, told her that since there's a hospital near the training center, the helicopters weren't from the border patrol but rather, for medical emergencies.

She got used to it, in the same way she got used to seeing squirrels and geese on trees and grass and got used to being around different people and their cultures. She got exposed to different music, beyond the corridos and rancheras she grew up listening to at home. She tasted different foods and watched different movies.

"I was just so shocked with everything, because I never saw none of this back home," Lozano says. "Everything I learn out here, one day I'm going to use to give back to my community."

After the Olympics, Gonzalez wants to take Lozano on a road trip. "All she knows is Laredo and Mexico," Gonzalez says. Even if she has been all over the world, there's only so much of it Lozano can enjoy because she's there to fight.

"We can go to Laredo," Lozano tells Gonzalez.

"Girl, I'm not going to Laredo," Gonzalez says. "I'm not going to get kidnapped."

Lozano laughs, in the way one does when someone you love might be half-joking about something.

"It's not that bad," she says. Out here, even with a friend, she has to explain where she's from.

AFTER ANOTHER TRAVEL DAY, Jennifer Lozano will return home. This time from Paris. This time having gone from the edge of the country to the center of the world's attention and walking into a boxing ring some 5,300 miles away from home. She'll return, again, and walk from her arrival gate, beneath Laredo International Airport's bilingual signs. Then, again, turn the corner to take the stairs down to the lobby.

Perhaps she'll skip down the stairs with the gold medal swinging from her neck, then go to Olive Garden for chicken alfredo to celebrate reaching the goal she has chased for a dozen years. Maybe it'll feel like a movie again. Or maybe she'll return with a heartache that those who love her the most will help her mend.

Either way, the people at the country's edge will gather to welcome her home like they did last October. It may not be hundreds. It may be fewer. It may be more. They cheer and shout and say prayers for Lozano because she's proof that dreams are attainable. Even if out there, past the horizon, is where doubt and fear also live.

The first time we spoke in early March, I asked Lozano what she felt the first time she left to train with the national team.

"It was scary," she said. "I tried to not say anything. I tried to just blend in as much as I could."

It was the first time she was away from the familiar voices she was used to hearing in her corner; those who alternate between English and Spanish and sometimes create a language by mixing both. Whatever fear she felt then, she suppressed deeply because there truly are two sides of Jennifer Lozano.

There's the side that stares into her bedroom mirror on nights she can't sleep. And the side that finds reassurance in reading a note tucked into the corner of the same mirror. Se va a tener que poner peor antes de que se ponga mejor y todo va a valer la pena . "It will be worse before it is better, and it will be worth the pain." Worth the journey. Worth the time and the distance. Worth the hunger. She wrote the note to herself years ago. Speaking to the whole of herself. Getting ready for this moment when she would represent Laredo and wear the uniform with the flag of the United States.

"There's pride in having the flag on my back," Lozano says. "It means a lot to me even though I represent both," she says of being Mexican American.

She finds solace there, living somewhere in the space that, much like the evaporating river twisting around her home, both divides and unites who she is. If she stares into the river with two names, she can see her reflection. She can see herself there -- a fighter and a boxer, at home at the edge of the country and an outsider closer to the center of it -- in between .