A Golden Moment for De La Hoya

Oscar De La Hoya stopped eating his lemon chicken, put his fork down and again picked up the gold medal that hung around his neck.

With both hands, he studied it and said, “I can’t believe it.”

In a Chinese restaurant a block from the arena where he had just won the lightweight gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics, De La Hoya was celebrating with about 20 friends, family members and a few reporters.

Earlier, he had scored a 7-2 decision over a German waiter named Marco Rudolph to fulfill a promise he had made to his mother, who had died of cancer two years earlier.

As she lay dying, he had promised her the gold medal. And there it was, in his hands.

He grew quiet, perhaps reflecting on his just-concluded amateur career, the years of long, tough training sessions at Resurrection Gym on South Lorena Street in East L.A., or at the Brooklyn Gym, in nearby Boyle Heights.

Maybe he thought of his Junior Olympic years, and of 1988, when he won his first national championship as a 119-pounder.

Then came two national championships before the Olympics, and a string of 36 straight victories in international bouts before Rudolph decisioned him at the previous year’s world championships, in Sydney, Australia.

So all was square now. He had avenged his only defeat.

He looked over his shoulder, at a young girl who shyly handed him her white cap and a felt-tipped pen. He signed the bill, and started to hand it back. Then he grinned, took it back, and added: “Olympic Champion.”

Also on this date: In 1969, leaders of the NBA and ABA expressed cautious optimism as merger talks began. . . . In 1970, Bill Shoemaker won his 6,000th race at Del Mar. . . . In 1954, in Brooklyn, the Dodgers scored 12 runs with two out in the eighth inning to beat the Cincinnati Reds, 20-7.