Needle deflates Mendes’ dreams
The YouTube clip is titled, “World’s Strongest Teenager,” and when it begins, you are looking at a real-life Popeye squatting 551 pounds three times in less than five seconds. There are black weight plates and blue ones and yellow ones and red ones.
It’s a virtual rainbow of machismo bouncing under the force of a steel bar.
He then squats 706 pounds five times as a song begins to play. It’s “The Final Countdown,” by Europe, signifying the baby-faced weightlifter is about to grunt and groan his way out of those teenage years and turn 20.
He lifts 507 on the bench.
And 429 on the snatch.
And 507 on the clean.
And 440 on the snatch.
The credits roll … Pat “Buff” Mendes … Age 19 … Body Weight 286 pounds … Las Vegas, Nevada … Only American ever to snatch 200 kilos … Youngest American to clean 500 pounds …
There is a line in the song that plays throughout the video: “I guess there is no one to blame.”
Mendes knows better today. He need only find a mirror.
Olympic dreams are heady stuff and take years and years of work and sweat and dedication to realize. Even then, most fail. It has been called the most compelling search for excellence in sport, and perhaps life. Competing for your country. Wearing its colors. Saluting its flag.
Mendes had such thoughts when it came to this summer in London, where many viewed him as America’s best chance at winning a weightlifting medal for the first time in 36 years. Injuries that have limited his training for some time now might have ultimately slowed that pursuit and pushed his dreams to 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.
It doesn’t matter now.
He made the sort of history no athlete desires.
The Del Sol High School alumnus became the first American in a current Olympic sport to test positive for Human Growth Hormone, which the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said Mendes admitted to when two samples came back positive. He accepted a two-year ban from competition for taking the muscle-building substance and won’t be eligible to return until 2014.
If he chooses to do so. If the dream of Olympic glory still holds such a place within him now that it has been proven he cheated.
Mendes chose not to talk for this piece, polite when contacted but nonetheless unwilling to discuss why a promising 21-year-old athlete with such talent would risk a potential Olympic medal and undeniable national embarrassment. Every lift he will take from this moment forward will be tainted in most eyes. There is no getting around that.
I have never believed such actions could be explained in a vacuum, that athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs are alone in their quest for greatness while venturing into the seedy side of sports and drugs.
No one does this alone.
Mendes is the reigning U.S. weightlifting champion in the super heavyweight division and finished eighth at last year’s Pan Am Games, a young man who trained locally out of Average Broz Gym and whose fascination with lifting grew in 2005 as he worked to become stronger for football at Del Sol.
How ironic. Years later, his using HGH just might convince the NFL to finally implement such a test. For months now, the players association has demanded more scientific data to prove one is reliable.
That data now has a name: Pat Mendes.
“Pat worked harder than anyone I have ever seen,” said John Broz, a four-time masters-age world champion who trained Mendes. “He was never late once in four years. Never missed a day. He was always there. This kid deserves all the great lifts he made.”
Two positive tests say otherwise and leave many wondering how the athlete with a weighted 4.4 GPA in high school, the two-way lineman in football, the gentle giant who was obviously smart enough to know better, made such a damaging choice in a sport that doesn’t make anyone rich. Money wasn’t the motivation. You don’t become wealthy doing this.
Mendes could retire but is probably too young for that. He could continue training the next two years and be randomly drug tested while having to fill out forms to alert USADA where he is at a given moment. He could chase his Olympic dream for America again or, as a duel citizen, perhaps Brazil.
This is what Mendes told the Review-Journal in August 2011: “It was the one thing I knew I could excel in, something I could be better at than anyone else. The Olympics had such an appeal … I’m definitely looking forward to winning a medal in 2012, and in 2016 I’ll be in my prime, and that’s when I’ll go for gold.
“I plan on dominating the sport for a long time.”
At some point, his journey took a turn for the worse.
At some point, Pat Mendes made the sort of awful choice that countless athletes do. The difference between him and most: He got caught.
And in an instant, all those YouTube videos and great lifts became tainted forever.
It’s a sad truth. This time, Popeye needed a lot more than just spinach.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from noon to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.