OLYMPICS

Taekwondo athletes seek Olympic glory in elite Miami-Dade fight club

In a South Dade gym, elite taekwondo athletes train under a silver medalist -- with their eye on Olympic glory of their own.

BY MICHELLE KAUFMAN

mkaufman@MiamiHerald.com

Tucked away in a gated industrial park across from Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport is a nondescript, unairconditioned gym that has become one of the taekwondo hubs of the United States.

Olympic-hopeful athletes from Hawaii, South Dakota, Seattle, Kansas City and New York have migrated to the Peak Performance Gym so they can train under Juan Miguel Moreno, 38, a three-time Olympian and two-time silver medalist. Of the 16 athletes named to the U.S. national team in late-April, six train in South Miami-Dade under the charismatic Moreno, who grew up in a rough section of Chicago and learned to tame his love for combat with the 1,500-year-old Korean martial art. Fifty athletes ages 10 to 29 are under Moreno's tutelage. And the waiting list is growing.

If you are thinking, ''Hey, my 6-year-old son is a big fan of the Ninja turtles and loves karate. Maybe I'll call Mr. Moreno and sign him up,'' forget about it. Moreno's gym is for elite taekwondo athletes only. Beginners and recreational athletes need not apply.

Take one whiff of the place on a Tuesday or Thursday night, and it's clear there is some Olympic-caliber sweating going on there. Athletes drenched from head to toe kick and punch each other with stunning speed and strength.

`YOU WILL ... BLEED'

''This is not a place for the faint-hearted,'' Moreno said, smiling. ``When you come here you will get cut and bleed, and your fingers will turn sideways. I'm very selective, and it's a professional environment. It's not Pop Warner. It's like college football or the NFL.

``I have some parents insist I give their kid a chance, and I tell them to come down for free for a few weeks, and they realize right away it's a little too much for them, too extreme.''

But it was exactly the kind of environment Stephanie Beckel craved. The Hawaii native, now 27, was living at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs when that program shut down, and she knew exactly where she wanted to relocate. She called Moreno, started working out at the gym and enrolled at the University of Miami, where she earned a psychology degree.

''This is the place to be if you're into taekwondo,'' said Beckel, the U.S. lightweight champion. ``A lot of people can't handle it, but for those who can, the training we get here is amazing. Coach pushes us to the next level. No one knows more about the sport than he does, so you trust him when you tells you to do something. He's been on top. He knows what it takes.''

Danielle Holmquist, a featherweight champion from Coral Springs, was so determined to train with Moreno that for three years her parents drove her two hours each way four nights a week from Stuart, where they lived at the time. They could relate to her passion for sport, as her mother, Dawn, made the Olympic trials in diving, and her father was a competitive swimmer.

''Everyone who ends up in this gym is here because they are on the same mission,'' said Holmquist, who graduates from FIU in December with a health science degree. ``Everyone here is sacrificing something, whether it be high school life, college life, social life. It's one of the few places I fit in.''

The other U.S. team members training with Moreno are Dalia Avivi, an Israeli who lives in Plantation; Lauren Cahoon, a University of Miami student; Talina Lee; and Antony Graf, 29, a former Olympic team alternate who is a personal trainer and runs a gym near the Falls in Kendall.

AGAINST THE ODDS

Supervising them from his glass-enclosed second floor perch is Moreno, who got started in the sport for the same reason many kids do. ''I loved karate movies, and I loved to fight,'' he said, smiling. His father is a Mexican-American ex-Marine and firefighter, and Moreno proved just as tough.

He was small for his age growing up in the Humboldt Park section of Northwest Chicago, where he got an up-close look at gang and mob activity. ''I am a mob connoisseur, fascinated with anything about the mafia,'' Moreno admits sheepishly, pointing to the Al Pacino posters on his office walls and the books on Al Capone and the Gotti family that sit on his desk, along with motivational titles by coaches Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Lou Holtz and Rick Pitino.

``From the time I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be tough. I loved soccer and baseball and other sports, but the first time I did taekwondo, I knew I had found my calling.''

At 17, he pulled off a monumental upset, beating nine-time national champion and U.S. team captain Dae Sung Lee at the 1988 Olympic Trials. Lee is Korean-American, the Olympics were in Seoul, and everyone assumed Lee would be competing in his homeland. Instead, it was the skinny Mexican kid from Chicago.

Moreno went on to win a silver medal at his first Olympics, though he (and others) felt he was robbed of the gold because his opponent was Korean. He won another silver at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, where he met his future wife, rhythmic gymnast Jennifer Lovell, a Miami native.

A DIFFERENT CALLING

He retired at age 20, married Lovell at 23, and opened a gym in Illinois. Four years later, he got the itch and came out of retirement. Moreno made it to the 2000 Sydney Games, but lost in the first round. He was devastated. Moreno decided to retire for good at that point, and he and Lovell moved to Miami in 2001.

They had three daughters, with whom he remains very close, though the couple divorced in September 2008. He opened the gym and began preaching his Peak Performance program, which combines fitness, fundamentals and psychology. ''None of my students will ever be out of shape, outworked or afraid,'' Moreno said.

That mentality is what drew Graf to the gym seven years ago. ''His system works; it's proven,'' Graf said. ``He is so inspiring. He's got charisma like Pat Riley. You want to listen to him.''

So much so that the family of Lyles Moore, 14, relocated to West Kendall three months ago from Kansas City. Lyles had spent a week training in Miami last fall, and Moreno suggested the kid spend more time here. His father, Doug, got home from the trip to find his job of 27 years as an operator for Time-Warner Cable had been eliminated. ''I took it as a sign,'' Moore said.

He packed up his wife, Sandy, and their four kids, and headed to Miami.

''Some friends thought we were crazy, but we did this for Lyles,'' the proud father said. ``We want him to train with the best, and this is where it's at.''