ALL GROWN UP: John Orozco, now 19, competes on the rings at this month’s Olympic trials in San Jose, Calif., earning a spot on the five-man US squad bound for London. (Reuters)
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He does chin-ups on a crosswalk signal next to a busy city street. He hoists himself into a handstand on metal bars in a park. Through the narrow aisle of a barber shop, he backflips over and over to the delight of a young customer.
OK, so being a gymnast growing up in the South Bronx wasn’t that hardscrabble, John Orozco admits, but it was fun to pretend for the camera. The 19-year-old was showcasing his Olympic talents in a music video for “The Fighter,” by the band Gym Class Heroes.
If his workout routine really involved asphalt and streetlights, his coach would freak out.
“ ‘Keep it in the gym!’ he’d say,” Orozco laughed.
Yet the video shows exactly what makes Orozco the unlikely darling of the London Olympics, which start July 27. The Puerto Rican teen from The Bronx has risen to the top of the gymnastics world, clinching a spot on the US men’s gymnastics team, and is a favorite for a gold medal.
“I’m proud to be from The Bronx,” Orozco told The Post from the Colorado Olympic Training Center. “I’m proud to not let it limit me in what I could do.”
The urban Hercules grew up in Harding Park, a blue-collar oasis, surrounded by the rougher streets of Soundview.
Olympic rings made from wreaths by his parents decorate his bungalow home, which is a short distance from the projects where Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor lived.
“It was tough financially and socially” being a gymnast in the city, Orozco said.
But his very tight-knit family made it work no matter what. He shared a bedroom with his brothers, Erik, Manny and Jason, without fighting.
“We couldn’t expect any more from them,” his father, William, a retired city sanitation worker, said of his four sons.
His mother, Damaris, shuttled him back and forth to a Chappaqua gym to train every day after school.
She even catered to earn extra bucks to pay for his training.
“We would cook and sell food at different locations to keep John in the sport,” she said. On the table she would set out the fare next to a little television that played videos of John in action.
In 2000, William Orozco picked up a flyer advertising free gymnastics classes for inner-city kids at the Sutton Gym in Manhattan. The class served older kids and John was just seven.
“This is not a baby-sitting service!” the instructor warned.
But the gym instructor eventually acquiesced. “Bring him in. Let me see,” he said.
It quickly became apparent that John possessed a natural talent. He easily picked things up from watching other kids and he loved the sport so much that his parents began scouting for other gyms.
They found World Cup Gym in Chappaqua, about 30 miles north of their home. It’s one to three hours away, depending on traffic.
Once the road was so backed up Damaris suggested going home.
He refused.
“Mom, even if it’s a half-hour, it’s practice!”
John won his first gold medal at that gym at age eight.
He rose to the stage to accept his prize, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a little boy crying because the others were taunting him and telling him he stank.
Stepping down from the podium, he removed the medallion from his neck and placed it on the tearful boy.
“Here you go,” he said. “One day you will be better than I am.”
As kind and modest as he was, he soon outshone everyone around him.
“We used to say he had that thing,” his mom said. “We didn’t know what to call that thing, but he had it. You could see the difference from the other kids.”
An honors student, he burned the midnight oil or completed homework and reports in the family car as they drove to different states for competitions.
“It’s all worth it,” he said.
A TINY scar above his eyebrow adds fierceness to his face. His mother remembers shopping with her husband in BJ’s one afternoon when the call came from his coach upstate saying that he had fallen off the high bar.
They rushed to Chappaqua to take the 10-year-old to the emergency room, where he was stitched up.
“The next day he was right back on the high bar and I was like, ‘Get down from the high bar now!’ ” his mom laughed.
But it’s the high bar that thrills him.
“It’s like you’re flying,” Orozco said of his favorite event. “It feels like you’re in the air forever.”
Inside his Bronx home, his parents are standing inside a shrine to their son’s achievements.
One day last year, their three other sons suggested remodeling a room as a surprise for John, who had been away for three weeks at the 2011 Japan Cup. Now the walls are lined with gold medals, plaques and trophies and tokens from places he has been.
“There were too many medals,” his mom said, as she walked around the room.
His parents have been there for him every step of the way and have documented his success carefully.
William, always with a video camera in hand, has recorded every competition in his son’s life — except for the one when he qualified for the Olympics.
Dad mistakenly left the cam’s charger at home.
“I was going to rip one of the cords out of the TV set in the hotel,” he joked.
His mom couldn’t even watch, she was so nervous. She always keeps her eyes shut until it’s over.
“I cover my face and listen to the crowd. If they go ‘aww,’ I go, ‘Is he all right, hon?’ And he’ll tell me yes or no.”
It’s hard to keep your eyes fixed on your child, especially when one wrong move risks injury. That horrible moment came in 2010 when Orozco injured his Achilles tendon during a miscalculated vaulting maneuver.
He underwent surgery, and now a teddy bear with a stethoscope — a gift from his parents while he was in the hospital — and a few get-well cards that sit in the room of honor are the only sign that it ever occurred.
When he returned to the mat in 2011, his mother had the courage to open her eyes, she said.
“I watched because there were no expectations,” she added.
Sadly, the Olympics were set to be the first competition that his parents would miss.
Travel expenses were way beyond their means. The Orozcos don’t even have a computer with a camera so that they can video chat with their son, who has been away at training camp for two years.
Then one night at a dinner for John, an announcement was made. Chobani Yogurt, John’s sponsor, paid for his parents, and three independent sponsors pooled money together for his three brothers to go to London. They leave in 10 days.
The news couldn’t make the Olympian happier, even though he’ll only get to spend about four hours with them during the week.
“I’m so glad, because they were there for me,” he said of his family.
“Especially when I was trying to do the impossible.”