South Florida’s Olympic Silver medal winner is back home.
Danell Leyva brought home a silver in high bar and another silver in parallel bars, both packed in red and white tube socks in his carry-on.
At the airport to meet his flight home were friends and family, also a few dozen young gymnasts from Universal Gymnastics, where Leyva started.
Clearly tired from everything that’s happened to him in the past few weeks, the 24-year-old said he said he’s happy to be home, if not a little overwhelmed.
“I didn’t expect all of this,” said Leyva of the big welcoming crowd. “I was just expecting like my family and stuff. [It’s] very unreal.”
Leyva adds the two medals in Rio to a bronze medal he won in London in 2012 in the individual all-around.
Leyva made the internet rounds when he brought a bit of Miami to Rio in his gala performance when he did a little strip tease of the top half of his leotard to Pitbull’s "Fireball" and danced on top of the parallel bars.
Leyva said the song was a coincidence
“It would have been even better if it was like Gente de Zona or something. That would have been perfect.”
Leyva started gymnastics as a kid at Universal Gymnastics, which was started by his stepfather and coach, Yin Alvarez. Alvarez defected from Cuba along with Leyva’s mom, Maria Gonzalez, where both were on the country’s gymnastics team.
Leyva says he plans to get some rest before touring around the country with other gymnasts to perform in exhibition shows.
Then, maybe on to acting, he says.
