Fil-Am teen wins lone gold for US in savate kickboxing

Logan delivers a high kick, a signature savate move. CONTRIBUTED

A Southern California teen stunned herself, her family and her coach by bagging the gold medal at the Savate Boxing Youth World Championships June 22-24 in Podcetrtek, Slovenia.

Fourteen-year-old Logan Elle Diño, who is of Filipino Vietnamese parentage, literally kickstarted her way to sports celebrity status by winning the first and only US gold in the competition.  Her team was the first ever to represent the United States in the ages 13-17 class, making history all around.

“We were in disbelief when the referee raised Logan’s arm,” the champ’s father Max Diño proudly told INQUIRER.net weeks later.

“It was an amazing moment for everyone. Her Lola (paternal grandmother Emma Palomar Dino) is probably her biggest fan and is extremely proud of her. She shared the good news with all her friends.”

They have not had their official victory party yet, says Max, who anticipates “a big family gathering (where) we’ll have all the Lolos, Lolas, Titos, Titas, and cousins over. Then we’ll celebrate.”

A firefighter and paramedic with the Los Angeles Fire Department, Max jubilantly recalled the joyful surprise ending to Logan’s three-day contest:

“The US team lost all their fights the first day. Morale was pretty down.  On the second day we lost all our fights until the last fight when (teammate) Sienna McCord won. We were so excited! On the last day Logan won and Sienna lost. Logan got gold and Sienna got silver. Those were the only two medals the US won.”

Held every two years, the competition welcomes fighters from France, Croatia, Italy, Serbia, Ukraine, Austria, Great Britain, Canada, and Ireland, adds Max, who is also in  Tactical Emergency Medical Support for LAPD SWAT.

Humble start

The French version of kickboxing called Savate (suh-vaht) is little known here unlike in Europe, where it was believed to have evolved in the 1700s as a form of street fighting in the streets of Paris and as stretch exercises that kept sailors physically fit during long voyages aboard French ships, according to US Savate Federation.

Its modern version was developed by Frenchman Michel Casseux and later by Charles Lecour, who combined kicks with punches typical of English boxing in his self-defense studio.

Savate champion Logan Diño is also a math whiz. CONTRIBUTED

From its humble beginnings the sport drew the interest of the nobility, eventually being regulated in the 1900s.  Savate earned legitimacy as a combat sport when it was included in the 1924 Olympics, its first and last time at the quadrennial international multi-sports tournament.  Seventy years later across the Atlantic, the US Savate Federation was founded.  Its current president is JoAnn Wabsica, Logan’s head coach along with Ed Monaghan.

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The name comes from the French word for “shoe” or the Spanish “zapato” because of the boots worn in competition along with gloves.  While boxing and karate both use belt colors to signify rankings, savate uses glove colors, though fighters may use the same glove colors through a promotion.  Beginners, however, start with colorless gloves.  Logan prefers black but wear brown gloves, per Max.

Also known as “boxe Francaise,” graceful movements, high kicks and open-hand strikes define the sport’s moves.

If the description sounds familiar, it’s because savate actually comprises the balletic fluidity of motion which sets the legendary Bruce Lee apart from martial artists of his time.  Indeed, the “dragon” himself incorporated savate techniques in his Jeet Kune Do style as have many practitioners of mixed martial arts today.

Diño’s expertise coincidentally burst onto the global stage at the same time Bruce Lee loyalists commemorated his 50^th death anniversary, adding wattage to her achievement and underscoring Lee’s enduring influence on martial arts.

Lee’s fellow California native and young champion disciple admires his “very sharp, clean movements and forms” but also looks up to him as a “great philosopher” whose maxim “Be water, my friend” she says “resonates the most” with her.

She learned the exhortation at her gym, Ekata Martial Arts in Santa Clarita, and explains it thus: “To be like water is to adapt to your circumstances. Water flows around obstacles, may it be a rock in a river or a boat in the ocean. Water also changes shape when put into an object such as a cup or a bowl. When a tough situation arises, we can simply move around it or change so we can conquer the problem.”

The ethic is something she shares with her father and is reflected in their Slovenia experience. Knowing how well she had trained, he was happy and proud just to see her exhibit her skills and courage, he says, but neither pressured her nor took for granted that she would win.

Family feat

Logan’s feat is her family’s too.  Max and his wife, Susan (Lee) are both athletic.

While in college Max took up Jeet Kune Do and Muay Thai for fun and fitness, not for competition and definitely not to hurt people, he stresses.  He touts Susan, a program manager with a tech company, as a world record-holder power lifter.

As new parents, they had concurred that their firstborn should learn to defend herself (son Rayden was born three years later).  At the age of 4, Logan began martial arts training.  At first she almost quit, Dad shared something common among tots that prodded them to give Logan a break.

LAFD firefighter Max Diño introduced his firstborn Logan to martial arts to learn self-defense. Max and Susan Diño and their son Rayden traveled to Slovenia to cheer Logan. CONTRIBUTED

But there was no turning back when she returned to the ring later.  At 8 she embraced savate and at 11 when she took to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.  She had barely marked her 14^th birthday when she earned her junior black belt in Xuan Tong Gung Fu, says her father, who considers training in said various martial arts “a good balance.”

Diverse, describes the interests of Logan, who will be in 10^th grade at Canyon High School in the fall.  Savate, she told her dad, ranks “somewhere in the middle” between her priorities – reading, art and video games followed by puzzles and Lego and ukulele.

“She definitely benefits from the personalized one-on-one training we do together,” Max says of the extra training with him as having contributed to her success.  “I just reinforce what she learns in class and try to improve her physical conditioning. I try to help her in whatever way I can. Sometimes I’m just her punching bag!”

Max may be Logan’s supplemental coach, but he is no stage dad. He would support Logan and Rayden in whatever they aspire to do or become down the road.  In fact he says he wouldn’t want Logan to go into professional fighting because of the potential for injury “particularly brain trauma.”

Logan seems to share the sentiment.  While she values her creative and athletic activities, she told Inquirer.net that she is proudest of her academic achievements, particularly her NASA award for Excellence in Math.

Further into the future, she envisions college at UCLA as a path to the medical profession.  That would definitely call for a fiesta led by her Lola Emma and Lolo Ricardo Diño, a retired diplomat from Bicol, who planted their roots in this country in the 1980s when Max was an infant.  These days they’re content to be the de facto pep squad, cheering the many and various accomplishments of the American generation of their family.