Claressa “T-Rex” Shields of Flint made history Sunday in Rio by becoming the first American boxer to ever win back-to-back gold medals at the Olympics.
Advertisement
Kazakhstan’s Dariga Shakimova and China’s Li Qian each won bronze medals for losing in Friday’s semifinals.
Brazil beat mighty Italy 25-22, 28-26, 26-24 for the home team’s first Olympic men’s volleyball title since Athens in 2004. “But I want to inspire. I did that. And that was where my life stopped”.
ESPN’s Dan Rafael writes that Shields, 21, dominated on Sunday against Nouchka Fontijn of the Netherlands, winning all four rounds on all three judges’ scorecards.
Shields’ gold was the third medal won by American boxers in Rio, after Shakur Stevenson’s silver in the men’s bantamweight division and Nico Hernandez’s bronze in the men’s light-flyweight competition. She wore knee socks that said “Superman”, with the superhero’s shield peeking out over the top of her boxing shoes.
With a almost full house of 100 attendees, this special film screening took place at Berston Field House in Flint, home of the gym where “T-Rex” has trained since her first days in the ring, and where she teaches today.
She was introduced to boxing by her father who would take her to a local gym to see the fights and would tell her about Muhammed Ali along with his daughter, Laila Ali, who followed in his footsteps.
“I don’t even remember getting hit”, she said. Sadly for Claressa Shields, endorsements have just not come her way.
But she also wants kids, 10 of them she says, because she has so much love to give.
“None of these guys understood what I was trying to build with Team USA when I got here”, Walsh said. “I can’t believe I just did this”, Shields said.
“One of the things she has done is really put us on the map for something else”, says Flint Mayor Karen Weaver. “I did great. I went out there, showed my skill, showed my class”. Motivated by the anger she felt as a child and survivor of sexual assault, she told ESPN that she “channeled all the anger from that into boxing, and I think that’s why I’m so successful at it”.
Shields has spoken passionately in the past about her tough upbringing in Flint, an economically depressed city in MI which suffered badly with the drastic downturn in the American auto industry and has been embroiled in a water-contamination crisis.
Claressa Shields won by unanimous decision on the final day of the Olympics.
“I’m just so happy and I prayed before I came here and I just knew God was with me. I’ve been through a lot”.
She’s not anxious about getting endorsements this time around, “cause everybody wants a tough, strong woman in their life!” She will leave Rio with a $25,000 gold medal bonus from the U.S. Olympic Committee, and she has a plan: She won’t be going back to live in the city of Flint, where crime rates are high and the economy is a shambles. “Not everyone can be an Olympic gold medalist, period”. Shields, meanwhile, is weighing her options.
“I went around with the flag because in 2012 I held all my excitement”.
Advertisement
The Rio Olympics are officially over following a closing ceremony that was a bit more subdued than the opener.
