COMING FULL CIRCLE

You think heaving a 16-pound metal ball is tough? U.S. shot-put champ Reese Hoffa lost his home and family and before he was five. Beijing will be a spin in the park.

Getty Images

Two days after winning the shot put at the Olympic track and field trials, Reese Hoffa was handed his new team uniform. As he ran his fingers across the "USA," the jokester who once competed in a Mexican wrestling mask turned somber as his thoughts went to brother Chris, a Marine on his fifth tour in Iraq. "He's serving our country," Hoffa says. "And by wearing this jersey, I feel like I am too." It was a sudden but understandable turn of emotion for Hoffa, who in his 30 years has learned the hard way that life is not all fun and games.

When Hoffa was 4, his birth mother, Diana Chism, put him and 6-year-old brother, Lamont, in an orphanage after the siblings burned down their house in Louisville playing with a lighter. Reese was soon adopted by Cathy and Steve Hoffa, who lived with their four kids on a farm in Bardstown, Ky., but Lamont stayed behind. The younger boy missed his brother but was afraid he'd be sent back if he complained. He was also the only black kid around, one so introverted and unsure of himself that after a year, Cathy asked if he'd like to change his name as a way to shake things up. And so Maurice Antawn Chism became Michael Reese Hoffa, beginning a process of reinvention that leaped ahead after the Hoffas moved to Georgia and Reese fell in love with sports. "It was the only thing that was genuinely mine," he says.

At Lakeside High, near Augusta, Hoffa was a sneaky quick defensive tackle. But when he was a junior, coach David Machovec convinced him to pick up the shot. Result: state titles that year and the next and a scholarship to Georgia. And when Hoffa arrived in Athens, a switch went off. "All the insecurities I had were gone," he says. "I was on my own. For the first time in my life, I could make my own choices."

Yet as Hoffa began his transformation into one of the world's premier shot-putters (22nd in Athens, gold at the 2007 worlds), he grew curious about his past. He scoured the Internet looking for his brother and birth mother and checked phone books when he traveled with the Bulldogs. Finally, in fall 2000, he saw this listing on Adopt-assist.com: I am a mother looking for a son given up for adoption at age 4 in 1981 in Louisville … His name at birth was Maurice Antawn Chism, and he has an older brother. Hoffa responded, and a few days later his phone rang. As soon as he realized it was his mother, he spoke the words he'd wanted to say for nearly 20 years: "I'm sorry about the fire."

Getty Images

Soon after that call, Diana and her husband, an attorney named Mark Watts, sent Hoffa a ticket to visit them in Indianapolis. As mother and son looked at photos, Diana explained that she'd given her boys away because she was 19, had no house and was out of money. She also told Hoffa about Lamont, who was eventually taken in by Diana's sister but later spent time in prison for drug offenses. "We just took different paths," says Hoffa, who now has a degree in education and married Renata Jean Foerst in 2005. Diana was at the wedding; Lamont was not.

When she saw Reese for the first time in two decades, Diana's initial thought was, He's as wide as he is tall. Not quite. Hoffa is 5'11" and 285 pounds, as graceful as he is large. In the ring, before a throw, he cups the iron ball in his right hand and raises it over his head, then sticks out his left arm and flutters his fingers before lowering the shot to his neck. He crouches, spins one-and-a-half times and heaves, making sure not to leave the seven-foot circle. More often than not, the ball hits the dirt more than 70 feet away.

The routine is a masterpiece of control in a confined space, but it is Hoffa's outsize personality that appeals to teammates. He's funny without trying, intense without pretense. He's all screams and smiles when he competes, and sprinter Tyson Gay is just one of many U.S. athletes who stop what they're doing to watch Hoffa perform. Which suits the big man fine. Hoffa thinks it's his job to lead the U.S. in Beijing. Shot put, after all, is the first track and field event, and Hoffa believes a gold medal will give his teammates a boost. He was certainly leading the way in Eugene when 41 U.S. Olympians put on their new uniforms for a celebratory jog around the track, 40 trailing Hoffa.

And somewhere on that lap, Hoffa's mischievous smile returned, a sudden turn for the best.

Print Article . Email Article. Subscribe to The Magazine