Many Bay Area Immigrants Have Split Olympic Loyalties

Just like other sports fans, San Jose's Jesús V. Ibáñez will pay close attention to the upcoming Athens Olympics. And he will cheer on athletes representing the home country.

Including 400-meter runner Ana Guevara.

Of Mexico.

Ibáñez, who has lived in the United States 34 years, also will root for American athletes, such as the boxing team. But like many immigrants, he will have split loyalties.

``It's not easy,'' said Ibáñez, editor of ``Area Chica,'' a bilingual sports magazine. ``My heart is with the Mexican athletes, but my thoughts are with the Americans. So I can follow my heart or my mind. I guess I'm divided in two.''

Most Bay Area viewers will be fervently pulling for U.S. stars such as swimmer Michael Phelps and the basketball team filled with NBA players. But in a region that truly fits the definition of a melting pot, thousands of immigrants will support athletes from their home countries, too.

For them, Olympic competitors such as Guevara, Indian long jumper Anju Bobby George and such Chinese athletes as gymnasts Yang Wei and Li Xiaopeng are heroes in the making.

``I'll root for both countries,'' said Giriraj Vengurlekar, a software engineer from Bombay who lives in Sunnyvale. ``India has a good men's field hockey team. But I also follow the U.S. women's soccer team and the Dream Team because I like LeBron James and Tim Duncan.''

In the four-county area of Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and San Francisco, 7 percent of the population was born in Mexico, 4 percent in China, 4 percent in the Philippines, 3 percent in Vietnam and 2 percent in India, according to 2000 U.S. census data.

When those people came here in search of opportunity, they also brought allegiances to their former countries.

``It's the same thing for people who moved from New York to San Francisco,'' said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. ``Are they going to root for the Yankees or are they going to root for the Giants? This is no different, just on a bigger scale.''

`Dual experience'

Manuel Pastor Jr., a professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz, remembers being at the 1984 Summer Olympics and seeing Los Angeles immigrants proudly wave flags from their homelands.

``It's really reflective of the dual experience of people who come to the United States,'' Pastor said. ``It's not really dual loyalties, because that makes it seem like people are torn. It's more like the acceptance of multiple identities.

``We often have an either-or perspective in the United States. You're either rooting for the U.S. or you're not. But the reality is you can root for both.''

The trouble, Pastor said, occurs when those old and new worlds collide on the playing field -- like when Mexico and the United States square off in soccer.

But mixed sympathies aren't a problem for Peter T.K. Liu, the CEO of the Northern California Chinese Athletic Federation. A native of Taiwan, he has been in the United States 26 years.

So if China and the United States have a showdown in, say, gymnastics?

``I consider myself American,'' said Lui, of Hayward. ``It really depends on how long you've lived in this country. People who have just come to this country probably don't have too much knowledge about American culture. But people who have lived here a long time are Americans. And we support our own country.''

But he encourages his three American-born children to also follow the Chinese athletes.

``What I tell my kids is you can not only cheer for one team, but cheer for two teams,'' Liu said. ``That makes it even more exciting.''

`Neighborhood first'

The Vietnamese community probably won't have anyone from its home country to pull for in Athens. The country has won only a single Olympic medal and is not expected to add to that total in Greece. But two Bay Area men competing for the U.S. team were born in Vietnam.

Khoa Nguyen, 37, a San Jose State graduate, will compete in singles table tennis. His family fled Vietnam in the mid-1970s. Howard Bach, 25, whose family left Ho Chi Minh City for San Francisco when he was 3, will compete in the badminton doubles event.

And when it comes to ranking whom Cupertino engineer Hemant Buch will cheer for at the Olympics, it's ``my neighborhood first.'' A native of India, Buch recently learned he lives near Nguyen, so he will pay special attention to table tennis in Athens.

``We're always proud of anybody from India who wins a gold medal,'' said Buch, who has lived in the United States since 1987 and now runs a cricket academy. ``But at the end of the day, we're looking at the U.S. medal total because we're here.''

Changing stereotypes

The Bay Area has become such a popular destination for so many cultures -- nearly one in three people in the four-county area was born in another country -- that perhaps every nation in the Olympics will have a local cheerleading contingent. Pastor noted that Afghanistan will send a team now that the International Olympic Committee has lifted its ban after the overthrow of the Taliban government.

``I imagine that Fremont will be going crazy,'' Pastor said of the South Bay city that has a large Afghan immigrant population. ``They might not win anything, but people will be interested.''

There will definitely be strong interest here in how Mexico performs. Guevara -- the world's No. 1 400-meter runner -- not only could bring a gold medal back home, but she also could change stereotypes in a country where female athletes are rare.

``The macho image in Mexico is a hurdle that's hard to overcome,'' Ibáñez said. ``Men don't let women develop their sports abilities. Women aren't supposed to play soccer or other sports.''

George's task might be even more daunting. She is trying to bring Olympic glory to a country that has seen precious little of it -- male or female. India, a nation of more than 1 billion people, has won only 15 Olympic medals and produces surprisingly few athletes beyond cricket or field hockey.

``Education is a big thing in India,'' said Vengurlekar, a board member of the Fremont-based Tennisball Cricket Association. ``Children are told that school comes first. Sports are second. Colleges don't have the infrastructure to support sports teams like they do here.''

But George, who trains in Southern California with men's long jump world-record holder Mike Powell, placed third at last year's world championships.

``It would definitely be a big boost back home if she does well,'' Vengurlekar said.

Meanwhile, Ibáñez concedes that it will be a tough sight if the 400-meter race comes down to a finish-line sprint between Guevara and a U.S. runner. Whom does he urge on?

``I'm going with Guevera, but my two kids will be jumping up and down for the American,'' Ibáñez said, laughing.