Josh Prenot and Carlos Balderas could have been just happy to be there.
Qualifying for their first Olympic teams ever, Prenot, a swimmer, and Balderas, a boxer, have already solidified themselves as Santa Maria Valley greats and world-class athletes, regardless of how they fared in the Rio 2016 Olympics this month.
But these two young men are just too talented and ambitious to settle for that story. Prenot and Balderas put on remarkable performances in Rio, on the world’s biggest stage, with the entirety of Santa Maria cheering them on.
In the 200-meter breaststroke competition, Prenot showed off his finishing prowess, catapulting himself in the final 100 meters to a silver medal. He missed the gold by a razor thin margin, touching the wall .07 seconds after gold medalist Dmitriy Balandin of Kazakhstan.
Lightweight boxer Carlos Balderas advanced to the Olympic quarterfinals after decisively defeating his two first round opponents: Kazakhstan’s Berik Abdrakhmanov and Japan’s Daisuke Narimatsu. Balderas was ultimately brought down by three-time World Amateur Champion, former Olympic bronze-winner Lazaro Jorge Alvarez of Cuba on Aug. 12.
To recap their astonishing Olympic performances, and shed light on the people behind them, the Sun caught up with Prenot’s and Balderas’ longtime coaches and relatives.
Prenot finishes strong, takes home silver in breaststroke
Santa Maria Swim Club coach Mike Ashmore recalls the moment that a young Josh Prenot set his sights on the Olympics.
Only 11 years old at the time, Prenot arranged a meeting with his parents, Bill and Tammy, and Ashmore to make an announcement.
“I’m gonna dump baseball,” Prenot told them. “And I want to make an Olympic swim team.”
His words landed with a thud. None of them expected that.
“I sort of looked at him,” Ashmore remembered. “And said, ‘I don’t think you understand what that really means.’”
But Prenot didn’t flinch: “I’ll do anything I have to do to be there,” he said.
Boy, he wasn’t kidding.
Twelve years after that announcement, on Aug. 10, a 23-year-old Prenot touched the side of the pool in Rio having accomplished more than just making an Olympic team: He was bringing home a silver medal.
And more than 6,000 miles away, at the Abel Maldonado Community Youth Center in Santa Maria, hundreds of community supporters jumped with joy. The television feed in the gym had gone dark, so spectators were huddled around their phones watching the race.
“There were these, like, pods of people gathered everywhere,” Ashmore said. “Thankfully, enough people had their phones up.”
It was an emotional moment for Ashmore, who was poolside for much of Prenot’s childhood coaching him on the Santa Maria Swim Club. Ashmore knows as well as anyone how hard Prenot worked for that moment.
“He’s got all the values you’d want in an athlete,” Ashmore said. “As far as character traits go—honor, respect, work ethic, discipline, goal-setting, all of those things—he has those in spades, and he finds a way to have a good time with the hard work. … He finally got to that really, really big goal last week.”
To the novice viewer, Prenot’s winning any medal appeared uncertain after the first 50 to 100 meters of the race. It looked like Prenot was off to a slow start. But followers of the swimmer weren’t worried. Finishing is Prenot’s not-so-secret weapon.
“He swims a very patient race,” Ashmore said. “Even at the Olympics, a lot of people let the pressure get to them and tend to let the adrenaline pull them into things that are unsustainable. … It’s fairly well known that if you’re staring at Josh going into the last 50 meters, you have a big problem, because he’s probably one of the fastest closers in the world.”
Entering the final half of the race, right on cue, Prenot started to gain ground and surpass the other swimmers. The final lap came down to Balandin and Prenot, with Balandin’s longer limbs touching the pool wall .07 seconds before Prenot’s.
Remarkably shorter than many male Olympic swimmers, Prenot more than makes up for that with his impeccable breaststroke form.
“There are a lot of coaches that just watch his stroke and technique,” Ashmore said. “From a technical aspect, I’d put him up as one of the best breaststrokes in the world.”
Prenot proved that in Rio. Already an NCAA champion at Cal and a university record-setter, Prenot now can add Olympic medalist to that resume.
“I’m a proud and happy mom,” his mother Tammy Prenot wrote to the Sun from Rio. “We are grateful for the overwhelming support of our community, church family, friends, Cal Bears family, and of course family all over the world.”
Balderas falls in quarters, but holds own against accomplished Cuban
Carlos Balderas gave it everything he had. The 19-year-old Santa Maria High graduate bounced around the Olympic boxing ring, relentlessly attacking his decorated quarterfinal opponent, 25-year-old Alvarez of Cuba.
Carlos would swing, swing, swing, and then defend. He was aggressive from the outset, and caused Alvarez to fall to the ground twice.
But Alvarez was utterly unflappable. A bronze medalist in the 2012 Olympics, Alvarez harnessed his experience and nimbleness to avert many of Carlos’ strikes. He then delivered strong, timely blows to Carlos in return.
The matchup played out as many expected: youthful ambition versus veteran calm.
Carlos’ father, Zenon Balderas, called it the gold medal fight before the gold medal fight.
“I told everybody: The gold medal was between Alvarez and my son,” Zenon said, although Alvarez would go on to lose in the semifinal.
When the final bell rang, Alvarez had won over the judges. He took the fight unanimously in points, 30-27.
Following the match, Zenon consoled his despondent son.
“He was crying. He was very upset,” he said. “He said, ‘I feel like I disappointed everybody.’
“I told him, ‘No, hijo, you did great. We love you. We’re proud of you. Everybody in Santa Maria is proud of you.’”
Carlos didn’t just inspire the community of Santa Maria, he helped revive Team USA. Carlos nearly made U.S. history with his victories. He was one victory shy of becoming the first American lightweight to make an Olympic medal round since the Atlanta games of 1996.
“I’m happy for my son,” Zenon said. “He’s barely 19-years-old and he was fighting two-time Olympians, people who had 1,200 fights, who are a lot older. He did really, really good.”
Like many of us who watched the quarterfinal, Zenon questioned why the judges didn’t award Carlos points for knocking Alvarez to the ground.
“[Alvarez] fell down two times,” Zenon said. “The first time, he tripped. But the second time, Carlos hit him on the temple and he went down. They never counted anything. Then, the last round, [Alvarez] was just running, running, running. There was no need for him to fight anymore, because he had won the first two rounds.”
Considering the bigger picture of Carlos’ accomplishments, it’s difficult to dwell on the missed points and what-ifs.
Carlos started boxing when he was in elementary school, at first merely as a solution to the trouble he was getting in at school.
“He used to get suspended from school,” Zenon said. “We told him, ‘You can’t keep fighting. You have to be a good citizen. You have to be a good person.’ I spoke to my dad and older brother, and we took him to a boxing gym here in Santa Maria. Ever since, he changed everything.”
Carlos didn’t receive any boxing training growing up other than from his family.
“My brother David and I have trained Carlos ever since he started boxing,” Zenon said.
Carlos will return home from Rio to the open arms of the Santa Maria community. The Balderas family knows that this isn’t the last the world will hear from Carlos.
“Carlos has a very, very bright future,” Zenon said. “In two, three years, I don’t know what he’s going to do to those guys.”
Send your local sports news to contributor Peter Johnson at pjohnson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Aug 18-25, 2016.