For Miami native Danell Leyva, current Olympic silver medalist on the horizontal bar and parallel bars, the Rio Olympics seemed out of reach just three months ago. The former reigning Olympic bronze medalist in the men's individual all around in the London 2012 Olympics did not initially make the USA men's gymnastics Olympic team. Instead, he was named an alternate alongside fellow gymnasts Donnell Whittenburg and Akash Modi. His alternate status was a surprise to many considering his strong finish at the Olympic trials, but a dog attack on his legs landed him in the hospital just a few months prior, severely affecting his performance at Nationals and other U.S. gymnastics meets. The holistic consensus that was reached was that he simply was not ready to compete in Rio.
Leyva took well to his position as an alternate. He trained for eight hours everyday leading up to the Olympics, knowing that while improbable, he might have to compete in the place of a teammate. Then the improbable happened. John Orozco tore his ACL and meniscus for the third time during the team camp. Orozco had torn his ACL just six months before and managed to cut his recovery time in half in order to compete in trials. However, Orozco would not be able to heal in time this time around for Rio. And so Danell Leyva stepped up to the plate.
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After a rocky start in the all around team finals, with the U.S. men getting fifth place, all eyes turned toward the event finals. Jake Dalton and Sam Mikulak, the top two qualifiers for the floor exercise, were favorites for a podium finish on the event. Alex Naddour qualified for pommel horse finals, which was quite a rarity as the pommel horse is known as the Americans' weakest event. Leyva qualified for parallel bars and the horizontal bar finals, the latter of which Mikulak was also a finalist.
After a disappointing turn on the floor exercise, Dalton and Mikulak failed to land onto the podium. Things took an optimistic turn when Alex Naddour performed the pommel horse routine of his life and managed to scrape up a bronze medal. On the last day of event finals, Leyva went up first on the parallel bars and scored a massive score of 15.900. This effort earned him a silver medal. Later that same day, Leyva performed a solid horizontal bar routine that placed him in second place and knocked teammate Mikulak, who was in bronze position, off the podium. For a second consecutive Olympics, Danell Leyva leads the U.S. men's team in medal count.
Many were shocked by his amazing performances in the event finals. The fact that an initial alternate ended up winning the most medals surprised many. What's not surprising, however, is how proud Miami and the rest of America are of Danell Leyva.
