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Hell's Kitchen Boxing Champ On Her Way to Rio Olympic Qualifiers

 Christina Cruz, 32, has been boxing for 10 years.
Christina Cruz, 32, has been boxing for 10 years.
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Courtesy of Christina Cruz

HELL’S KITCHEN — The country’s top-ranked amateur female boxer came one step closer to going the distance to Rio this weekend.

Christina Cruz, 32, qualified Saturday for the Olympic trials, one of eight women in the country to do so, she told DNAinfo New York.

“In 2012, I fell short, so now I'm just trying to come back and get that spot on the team,” she said.

The trials for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janiero are set for the last weekend of October.

Cruz has been working out at Team USA’s Olympic training center in Colorado Springs for the last year, but the Ninth Avenue native got her pugnacity growing up in Hell’s Kitchen.

“I guess I'm a city kid, I grew up in the city,” Cruz said. “Wasn't no suburban place. I grew up with a bunch of boys around me and two brothers so I always had to be tough.”

“I’m definitely not an aggressive person,” she added. "I just go in there with one thing on my mind, which is to win.”

Cruz attended P.S. 51 and High School for the Humanities. Her first gym was Kingsway on West 28th Street.

“A friend introduced me to a boxing gym and I absolutely fell in love with it right away,” she said. “The competitiveness, everybody working hard just drew me in.”

After her first year of training in 2007, Cruz made the national team, and since then, “it’s just been straight-up boxing,” she said. Rio would be her first Olympic games.

Next week, Cruz heads to Florida for the 2015 Women's Golden Gloves championship.

“I just dedicate my whole life to this one thing,” she said.  “It’s fun for me. I think it’s work as well, but it is something that I love.”

She is also completing a bachelors in computer science online from Devry University, so between workouts she does her school work.

She said the Colorado lifestyle is good for focused training — but she misses Claudio’s Pizzeria on Tenth Avenue.

“They know me since I was about 6 years old,” she said. “Being here in Colorado, there’s really no pizza places like New York pizza.”