Brooklyn's Sadam Ali earns spot on 2008 U.S. Olympic boxing team

BY TIM SMITH
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Thursday, July 10th 2008, 11:00 PM

It's hard to tell just which event Sadam Ali is most excited about - earning a spot on the 2008 U.S. Olympic boxing team or the recent birth of his brother, Adam.

"I have four sisters and this is my first brother," Ali said. "It's great to have a little brother. He's a future Olympian."

If Ali, a two-time Daily News Golden Gloves champion, can go to Beijing and return with a gold medal, he will certainly give his little brother quite an act to follow. Ali, a lightweight from Brooklyn, is also blazing a trail himself. The son of Yemeni immigrants, Ali is the first Arab-American boxer to compete for the United States, and if he can win a gold medal he will become the first boxer from New York City to do so since Mark Breland in 1984.

"It feels great. Whoever thought it would be me?" Ali said during a noontime stop with other members of the U.S. team at the East Harlem Boys & Girls Club Thursday.

"That just goes to show that all of that hard work pays off. It's just an honor to go over and fight in the Olympics."

Ali's spot on the team was jeopardized earlier this year after he tested positive for a banned substance. But he was absolved of any wrongdoing when it was determined that a doctor for the U.S. boxing team had given him some cold medicine that contained the banned substance during a meet in Beijing.

"The fact that the doctor admitted that he made a mistake helped," said David Ali, Sadam's father. "It was a mistake. He thought he was helping but he gave him six different cold medicines."

The biggest sacrifice that Ali had to make was leaving his family in Canarsie and going away to the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs for the last 10months.

"Leaving my family was hard, because I've never really been away from home for that long," said Ali, who trains at Brooklyn's Starrett City BC when he's home. "I missed my parents and my four sisters and I missed my little brother being born."

Daniel Campbell, the U.S. boxing coach, said he wanted to bring the boxers to camp to keep them focused and to hone their styles for competition on the international level. David Ali didn't agree with the move, but went along with it because he didn't want to interfere with his son's Olympic boxing dream.

"I thought it was a bad idea, because you're taking a 19-year-old kid and you're taking him away from his family and his home and he really doesn't have anyone to look after him," David Ali said. "It was tough. He's so far away and you just hope he's doing the right things."

Ali is simply eager for the Games to begin and to see if all those sacrifices will pay off. He doesn't box until Aug.11 - three days after the Games start. He said the keys for the team are to stay focused and be ready for anything.

"Probably the teams we have to look out for are Russia and Cuba," he said. "But we can't underestimate anybody because all of those guys we face will have trained just as hard was we did to get there."

Related:

Looking at the U.S. Boxing Team: Javier Molina

Posted March 17, 2008 at 11:45 AM by Michael J. Sedor

It’s judgment day in Trinidad for America’s half-dozen undefeated pugilists. All six will put their Beijing hopes on the line today. If they win they are off to China, if they lose they must travel to Guatemala City next month and start the qualification process over. The United States will be represented by three fighters in each of the day’s two sessions. In the afternoon session Brooklyn’s Sadam Ali begins the action against Argentine Juan Nicolas Cuellar. Ali is aiming to be the first Arab-American boxer to represent the United States in the Olympics. The afternoon finishes with the two American heavyweights, Christopher Downs and Michael Hunter II, looking to continue their dominance versus Venezuelan Luis Gonzalez and Virgin Islander Clayton Laurent respectively. There is, however, another American-born boxer fighting to go to Beijing in the afternoon session.…(Continued...)