USA TODAY International Edition
Shields repeats gold, makes U. S. history
The surprise was hidden in her pocket — something historic.
Claressa Shields stood on the podium Sunday with the Olympic gold medal hanging around her neck that she had just won in women’s boxing. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her other gold medal, the one she won in the 2012 London Games.
She slipped it over her head, looked down at both medals at her chest and let out a huge smile. It was historic on so many levels, something never seen before. Shields became the first U. S. boxer to win two gold medals.
“I’m the two- time Olympic champion!” Shields said after defeating the Netherlands’ Nouchka Fontijn in the women’s middleweight ( 75- kilogram) division in a unanimous decision. “Oh my God, I feel like I’m dreaming. I don’t want to wake up right now. Please tell me I’m not dreaming.”
Shields was still wearing tape on her hands, still covered in sweat as she talked. An American flag was draped around her neck. After the win, she did a cartwheel in the ring and ran around the arena with the flag. She let all of her emotions show, something she didn’t do in 2012 and has always regretted. But not this time. She let it all out, pure unbridled joy.
“I worked so hard to be here,” she said. “Oh my God, this is crazy.” GROWING UP This is a gold medal that represents survival. She escaped poverty and a difficult childhood, bouncing between 11 homes by the time she was 12, turning all that pain into a champion boxer.
It is a story of growth and maturity.
“I want to inspire people,” she said at a news conference where she was named the tournament’s most outstanding boxer. “I want to help people. I want to give people just a little bit of hope.”
After winning gold in London, Shields did not get the money or fame or endorsements that she had expected. She was perceived to be too strong, too tough and too fierce to be marketable and didn’t have a strong, experienced team behind her. After winning the gold medal, life didn’t get easier. When everybody thought Shields had become rich, there she was, going to a collection agency to pay her mother’s past- due water bill.
But she is older now, more mature, and has control of her life. She split from her longtime coach, Jason Crutchfield, who had guided her when she started boxing at 11 and had been a father figure. She moved to the U. S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, staying in a dorm. The move was to simplify her life, trying to avoid the distractions in her hometown of Flint, Mich.
No longer a teenager, she also has learned responsibility.
“The difference is, now that I’m grown, I make a lot of decisions in my life,” Shields said last week. “I kind of protect myself. When I was 17, my coach would turn off my phone for me. He would ask me if I was OK all the time. He would check on me constantly. He would see me on Twitter at 1 in the morning, and he’d be like, ‘ What are you doing? Go to bed.’
“Now, it’s like, I have to tell myself to do those things. Go to bed. Drink right. Eat right. Don’t stay up too late.”
With this win, Shields becomes the only U. S. boxer to win two Olympic gold medals. But she is not the most accomplished boxer in Olympic history. Two Cubans have won three golds each: Teofilo Stevenson dominated the men’s heavyweight division from 1972 to 1980 and Felix Savon won three in a row from 1992 to 2000.
Shields is not the most accomplished female boxer in Olympic history, either. Here in Rio, Nicola Adams won the flyweight boxing division for Britain for the second consecutive Games.
That’s not, in any way, to diminish what Shields has done.
She still has work to do to become the greatest Olympic boxer in history. But she is only 21, so she has time for that. WHAT’S NEXT Before the bout Shields came to a conclusion: There was no way Fontijn was going to win. Shields had beaten her two months ago for the world championship, and at that time, Shields had an injured hand and shoulder.
“She can’t outbox me,” Shields said. “She can’t outfight me. She can’t out- think me. So how is she going to win? She will have to knock me out. But I knew she couldn’t do that.”
Fontijn had a size advantage and a longer reach, but that didn’t matter. “Every time I came back to the corner, they said, ‘ You got that round. You got that round,’ ” Shields said. What’s next? She has no idea. “I’m ready for a break,” she said. “I want to go home.” Back to Flint, to see her family. “I’m a two- time Olympic gold medalist!” Shield said. “I can’t believe I just said that.”