In order to save himself from the hotel fire, he jumped from the second floor of the building. Fortunately, he ended up with some minor injuries.
Cejudo said that when he heard the alarm, he thought that somebody accidentally pressed it and returned to bed, but when he woke up the next time, he realized that the half of the hotel was in flames.
“I saw houses on fire and I looked to my left and half of the hotel I was staying at, my floor, was on fire,” Cejudo remembers. “It was scary. And at that time, the only thing I could do was to grab my slacks. I grabbed my slacks I wore the night before, but I couldn’t see anything to do anything else. I put my slacks on, I opened the window and I jumped off. I leaped off the second story of the hotel.”
In addition to the burns, Cejudo also received a slight injury to his ankle.
“As I jumped off, I landed on a branch that was on fire. Honestly, there was fire everywhere. The fire burned the top of my right foot. I was OK, but I had to put the fire out that was on my right foot. And as I was walking toward the front of the hotel, where the lobby was, it was all going. I saw the hotel on fire, cars on fire, houses around it. It was terrible.”
However, while he was running from the fire, he forgot his Olympic gold medal.
“You know, the medal just was an object, just a medal and that’s it,” Cejudo stated. “What really meant something was the blood, the sweat, the tears that went into getting that medal. I’ll always have the memories of that with me.”
“I’m not too worried about that,” he continued. “This was a tragedy, just like that terrible thing that happened in Vegas. It’s awful. Losing a medal, man, I am fortunate to be here talking to you and being alive. That’s the important thing.”
“I’m just happy to be alive.”
