Father of Triangle-raised Olympian must watch son compete from home, again

Tokyo-bound, Jordan Windle boarded his plane from Austin, Texas, early last Sunday morning, the exact moment having played repeatedly in his head.

“I had so many images of what it would be like in the (Olympic) Village as I was packing,” Windle said. “I struggled to close my eyes on the flight (because) of how excited I was.”

Windle is one of the 11 members of the U.S. Olympic Diving Team competing at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games.

A lifetime achievement for any top-tier athlete, it is especially so given the 22-year-old’s background.

Jordan Windle is originally from Cambodia. He became at orphan when he was only a few months old.

His father, Jerry Windle, adopted Jordan from an orphanage in Phnom Penh in June 2000. He was 18 months old and weighed just 16 pounds. He was suffering from parasitic infections throughout his body.

“He spent a whole year in that orphanage like that,” Jerry Windle said. “That’s how genuinely ill he was.”

Jordan Windle has been working for this Olympic moment his entire life.

But because of the coronavirus pandemic, Jerry Windle won’t get to see his son compete on the world stage in-person.

Every coach’s dream

Windle started diving when he was 7 years old. The first time he qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials, he was only 12. He was the youngest person to ever qualify for the diving trials.

When Jordan was In high school, the Windles moved to Morrisville, North Carolina, so he could train under Nunzio Esposto, the head diving coach at Duke University.

“(Jordan) was a lot of fun to coach. I had a great time coaching him,” Esposto said in a phone interview. “(He is) actually the kind of athlete any coach would want to have under him.”

After training with Esposto for nearly four years, Windle qualified for the Olympic trials again when he was 16. But in a major upset, he didn’t make it.

“He had a good trial, just not quite good enough,” Esposto said. “But I knew that he would probably qualify this time, especially since he was on that path.”

Windle had set the 3 meter springboard record for the NCAA as a diver for the University of Texas at Austin in 2020.

And the third time was the charm at the 2020 Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, after the upsets in 2012 and 2016. He qualified in the men’s 10 meter individual platform. With a total 1401.4 points, he ranked second throughout the meet.

Watching from the stands Jerry Windle, who had flown into Indianapolis from California. Jordan says his dad always tries to watch him compete.

“He wants to be able to come to all of my competitions just to spend time with me and support me through things that I love to do like diving,” he said.

In a highlight video of Windle’s performance at the trials, after every dive, the camera flashes to his father cheering from the stands. His eyes well with tears of joy.

Because of COVID-19 restrictions, Windle won’t get to see or hear his dad cheering from the top of his lungs in Tokyo.

“We found out just a couple of months ago that there weren’t going to be spectators allowed in Japan,” Jerry Windle said in an interview. “That was really deflating for me.”

But it won’t be the first time that safety precautions prevent Jerry Windle from seeing his son compete in person.

Russia and LGBT rights

In 2014, when the Windles still lived in Morrisville, Jordan qualified for the World Junior Diving Championships in Russia. This was around the time the Russian government banned the promotion of “non-traditional sexuality,” which was seen as an attack on LGBT people’s rights.

As a gay man, Jerry Windle worried about traveling to Russia with his then-partner and Jordan, then 15.

“There was so much propaganda going on around the Russian views on the LGBT community,” he said. “As a family, we made the decision that Jordan would go to Russia on his own.”

He says he wasn’t as worried about his own safety as much as how an incident might weigh on Jordan’s life and diving career.

“I am Jordan’s dad. One small piece of who I am is I’m a gay man,” he explained. “That sometimes trumps what the real story is — of what an athlete’s accomplishments are.”

COVID-19 strikes again

This year, it’s the coronavirus pandemic forcing Jerry Windle to once again watch his son compete from a screen.

Before Japan banned spectators, he had bought a plane ticket and rented an apartment near the diving venue in Tokyo. This was months before the Olympic trials.

“I wasn’t assuming or presuming he would make the Olympic team, but if you wait until the last minute, forget it,” he explained. “You won’t get a ticket, or a seat, or a place to stay anywhere.”

A longtime health care industry worker, Jerry Windle says he understood when it was time to switch gears and cancel his travel plans.

“As a health care professional, it makes absolute sense,” he said. “If they offered me a ticket to go I probably wouldn’t go just because I don’t want to expose anybody or be exposed (to COVID-19).”

Cheering from home

Sometime before Jordan’s events, an NBC camera crew will set up in the Windles’ living room, now in in California, to capture Jerry’s reactions to his son’s performance.

Other family members and friends will also be “safely” watching Jordan with him in a small watch party.

“They’re really trying hard to make it a good experience, not only for the athletes, but for the for the families, as well,” Jerry Windle said.

Besides not being able to see Jordan in person, what makes this an even more emotional event for the Windles is Jordan’s humble beginnings as an orphan in Cambodia.

Jordan Windle says, even though he was raised in the United States and is an American citizen, he is proud of his Cambodian origin. He says he is also representing his fellow Cambodians at the Olympics.

When he was 18, he got the Cambodian flag tattooed on his right arm to display during competitions, his dad said.

“I will never forget where I cam from and the people that took care of me until the point my father adopted me,” Jordan Windle said. “(The tattoo) shows that, no matter what, I have them beside me and I’m diving, not only for Team USA, but for them as well.”

Windle returned to Cambodia with his dad when he was 16 years old.

Seeing the people’s dire living conditions made Jordan want to help. He performed diving exhibitions for children in the area to inspire them. He even thought of starting a nonprofit diving program for Cambodian children, his dad said.

“That is Jordan and his passion for kids and people,” he added.

The Windles are working on starting the Jordan Pisay Windle Foundation to make it happen.

“(The foundation) will help kids in Cambodia and the United States who are on the fringe of society,” Jerry Windle said. “Often times, unfortunately, it’s the immigrants.”

Jordan Windle’s first event will be the Men’s 10 meter platform preliminary at 3 pm JST Friday, August 6, at the Tokyo Aquatics Center. Fellow Team USA diver Andrew Capobianco, who is also from Wake County, will compete in the Men’s 3-meter springboard event.