By Tim Layden, NBC Sports, January 8, 2020
This is one of those Olympic stories. You know: A story about talent, passion and very real sacrifice in pursuit of gold, silver or bronze. It is the story of a judo player named Jack Hatton, who practiced his sport from just before his fifth birthday until four days past his 24th, when he stood on the cusp of qualifying for his first U.S. Olympic team, this summer in Tokyo, the cradle of his sport and a country that Jack had come to love almost like his own. Other Olympics were likely to follow, and possibly medals, as well. It is the story of a son and brother, a friend and teammate, a child and a man. And a survivor. Until he wasn’t.
Like so many in this genre, it is a family story: The Hattons moved 150 miles upstate from New York City when Jack was 10, in part because a top judo coach lived there, in part for other reasons that seemed practical at the time. They struggled, and money was almost always a problem. A marriage slowly fell apart. One son was bullied. After high school, Jack moved, from New York to California to Massachusetts. He traveled the globe on a shoestring, because lasting solvency – never mind glamour – in less prominent Olympic sports comes not in the journey but at the destination, and often not even there. Benefactors and sponsors helped with financing, and at the very end Jack had gathered enough support to pay for most of his professional work. He had achieved a measure of traction, where many never do. This is part of an agonizing puzzle.
In a punishing sport where men and women try to end matches with quick and decisive throws, Jack liked to carry his opponents into what judokas call deep water. Eight minutes. Twelve minutes. Longer. Most not only dislike deep water, they fear it. It is a place where strength and power die and only the mind survives. “It’s torture,” says Adonis Diaz, a U.S. judo player and a close friend of Jack’s. Jack wasn’t as ripped or as powerful as many of his opponents; at age 20 he couldn’t do a single pull-up (he was up to half a dozen or so by the end, but from a static, straight-elbow hang with no leg kipping; try it sometime). But his lower body was as dense as poured concrete — “Like his feet were rooted into the mat,” says Alex Turner, another friend and fellow judoka – and his grip was as implacable as winter cold. He wasn’t a high-level thrower (yet), but neither would he be easily thrown. One of his judo partners called him the Iron Marshmallow, because he looked soft, but was not. He made opponents endure suffering.
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