Meet the Olympian next door

Jamel Herring (left photo, right), fighting Brit Josh Taylor last year, is also on the all-Marine boxing team. Herring (right photo, left) represents the IS as a Marine and an Olympian. (Scott Heavey / Getty)

Olympic sailor Debbie Capozzi scoops icy treats at her family’s shop. (Christian Johnston)

London may have beaten New York for the honor of hosting the Olympics this year, but fortunately, New York is sending some Olympians of its own to even the score. “Being from New York already sets you apart as an Olympian because it means you’re not just a world-class athlete; you’re also from a world-class city,” says Otis Davis, founding president of the Tri-State Olympic Alumni Association (and himself a gold-medal sprinter from the 1960 Games, where he hung out with fellow Olympian Cassius Clay, now Muhammad Ali).“The other athletes look at you and they know two things: You’re tough and you’re cool. They don’t think that if you’re from Slippery Rock, Ky.”

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PHOTOS: MEET THE OLYMPIAN NEXT DOOR

Still, even Olympic superheroes have a Clark Kent side to their lives. (Harlem resident Kevin Young, 45, who often runs through Central Park? He holds the world record in the men’s 400-meter hurdles that he set in 1992.) There could be an Olympian living next door to you, DJ-ing your house party or scooping your ice cream. We talked to a few about the jobs they have when they’re not being televised to an audience of billions.

Here’s a look at three local go-getters who are going for the gold.

Race Imboden isn’t sure what’s weirder: that a red-haired Brooklyn kid named after a Jonny Quest character is a connoisseur of hip-hop (he picked up a love for Souls of Mischief and J Dilla at his Fool’s Gold Record internship) or that a hip-hop Brooklyn boy with a weakness for Top Shop and Shake Shack is also an Olympic fencer. “We all get pumped up to hip-hop,” he says of his fellow fencers, citing A-Trak remixes as favorites.

His internship ended in June, just as his Olympic schedule kicked into high gear. But he still works as a DJ whenever he can. He moved to Park Slope from Atlanta when he was 10, “when it just became the stroller neighborhood,” he says. These days, like any self-respecting hipster, he rides his vintage Fuji bicycle to concerts at Union Pool and the Knitting Factory or bikes across the Williamsburg Bridge to hit up the Lower East Side. This Olympian’s kryptonite: penang chicken curry at Rice Thai on Park Slope’s Seventh Avenue. “I eat there two or three times a week,” he says. “I can’t wait to hit up the curry spots in London.”

There are two kinds of New Yorkers you don’t want to mess with: Marines and Olympic boxers. So it’s best to keep Jamel Herring happy; he’s both. The native son of Coram, LI, spends a lot of his time stationed away, mostly at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where he has risen to the rank of sergeant. He’s been on the all-Marine boxing team since 2008 and is quick to mention that he’s the first New Yorker on the Olympic boxing team since Sergio Reyes in 1992 (the same year, he adds, that Oscar de la Hoya was on the team).

“More is expected of you as an Olympian than as a Marine,” he says. “I’m not rah-rah-rah. I’m laid-back. I’m an average New Yorker. But it’s a small stage — there are fewer Olympians than Marines — so it’s a higher standard.”

At 5-foot-10 and 141 pounds, Herring boasts only 3 percent body fat. “The average fit Marine,” he says, “is more like 7 to 10 percent.”

If Debbie Capozzi isn’t cooling off by catching some sea breeze on the Olympic sailing team, she’s cooling off by scooping Italian ices from her family’s shop in Patchogue, LI. The shop, Tina’s, is named for her younger sister. Capozzi’s worked at the family business for the past three years. It all helps her cool off in other ways, too. “When you’re at home, it’s a great change of pace from the competitive side,” she says.

The sailor, from Long Island’s South Shore town of Bayport, is glad to have grown up outside the hard-core bustle of Manhattan. Her parents, both yacht-club members, signed her up for sailing lessons when she was 12. Now the whole town is behind her. “My town is small, so I’m really lucky to know how supportive everyone is,” she says.

London will be her second Olympics; she was part of Beijing’s seventh-place team in 2008.

She has had to ratchet down her scooping the closer the Olympics get, but she’s still home five days a month, and working many of those days. “It’s probably the American way, right? You kinda work for what you get,” she says. “You make both ends meet.”

Fittingly, the most popular flavor at the shop is also the most patriotic: a red, white and blue rainbow Italian ice.