In the early ’90s, Victor Montalvo’s parents decided to leave Mexico and trekked across the Chihuahuan Desert for a better life.
“They basically had to go through the desert and then get into some random dude’s car in Texas. And from there, they drove down to Florida,” Montalvo told Fox News Digital about his parents’ journey to the U.S. “My dad told me that he already had a brother that was in Florida. And they’re like, ‘Hey, you guys should come here. It’s a better life.’”
It was an existential decision that led to Montalvo winning bronze for the U.S. at the Paris Olympics in breakdancing, which was potentially the only time the sport will ever be featured in the Olympics.
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For Montalvo, representing the U.S. was an easy decision inspired by the one his parents made many decades ago.
Montalvo said his parents first worked on a farm in Florida picking oranges and strawberries for long hours, before his father later got a job at Rainforest Café in Disneyland. Montalvo is the middle of three children for whom his parents had to provide. But that didn’t stop them from introducing Victor to breakdancing at just 6 years old when they came to the country where the sport originated.
“I could have represented Mexico, but honestly, it just feels like I’m taking someone’s spot, you know? And I wasn’t born in Mexico, my family was born in Mexico, I was born in the U.S. So, for me, it was best to just represent where I was born and where I’m from,” Montalvo said.
But just as that destiny began when his parents hopped into the back seat of a car to Florida, it was nearly all undone while Montalvo was in the back seat of a car driving through Los Angeles on his birthday on May 1, just three months before Paris.
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He was in the back seat of a car being driven by his friend, while his friend’s girlfriend sat in the passenger seat. They all nearly lost their lives when another car drove through a red light and smashed into Montalvo and his two friends.
Montalvo said he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
“I had severe whiplash, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to compete. I thought my neck was broken,” Montalvo said. “My friend had a small shoulder injury, I had crazy severe whiplash, I couldn’t move my neck. I thought it was broken for like a month.”
Montalvo had to go through a month of physical therapy, interrupting his normal training, to regain full control of his neck. While he wasn’t initially sure if he would be able to come back from it, he returned to form.
Then, just as he finished physical therapy for the accident, he suffered a shoulder injury during training. He had to heal that less than two months until Paris.
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“Man, why is this stuff happening right before the Olympics, right before my event?” he said to himself during that time.
But he persevered through the physical therapy for his shoulder, and he made it back to the floor for a chance at a historic medal.
And at age 30, the breaking veteran earned his Olympic hardware when he defeated Japan’s Shigeyuki Nakarai in the bronze medal match, 3-0, on the second-to-last day of the Paris Olympics.
He returned home this week to a hero’s welcome and kept the medal close, in his pocket, as he did a series of media interviews on Wednesday. He keeps it close, knowing it could potentially be the only Olympic medal America ever wins in his sport.
Who knows what the medal may someday be worth if there is never breakdancing in the Olympics again?
But Montalvo, at age 30, knows that Paris may have been his only chance to compete in the Olympics as a “breaker.” He knows the sport won’t be coming back in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, despite the fact that his sport originated in the U.S. But its future as an Olympic sport at the 2032 Games in Brisbane, Australia, and beyond is unclear.
“We don’t really know if breaking is ever going to be in the Olympics again,” he said. “For me to have a medal and be like, I made history, I made history for the breaking culture, so it really means a lot to me that I’m the first-ever American breaking medalist.”
The breaking tournament received mixed reviews from Olympic viewers online. Criticism was harshly drawn to Australian athlete Raygun, who received zero points in the competition and went viral for questionable moves.
But for Montalvo, Raygun’s viral routine has actually been prosperous for his personal brand, and he thinks it has even grown the sport as a whole.
“I went to the comments on my battles and people underneath are like, ‘Wow! I came to watch breaking because of Raygun, and now I’m so invested into it. This is actually awesome, you know?’” Montalvo said. “So, it’s like we’ve been getting a lot of negative reviews, but now there’s a lot of people tuning into the event, watching the event and then actually enjoying it.
“They went to see if breaking was that bad, and they just tuned in.”
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