Background

Jorge’s father, Jose, came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 14 or so, laboring first as a migrant worker in the fields of the Midwest and then in a Chicago factory. “They were looking to live the American dream,” said Jorge of his parents, who by 1980 – the same year Jorge and his twin brother, Edwardo, were born – had saved enough to open Torres Jewelry, which now has three stores, in Chicago and Minneapolis.

Since winning his first national championship when he was 11, Jorge has been tagged for stardom. A three-time Illinois high school cross country champion and 1998 winner of the Foot Locker National Championships, he was ranked #3 in the U.S. in 2002, while still in college. By the summer of 2003, he had already made his first World Championships final, at 5000m, but even then everyone saw the longer distances as his destiny. They were right: in 2006, he won a national title at 10,000m in his first race ever at the distance.

Earlier this year, Jorge and his twin brother, Edwardo, both competed for the US at the World Cross Country Championships, the first time they had run for their country on the same team. As Edwardo told a reporter from the Boulder Daily Camera: "Over the years, we have pushed each other in every way possible. We are best friends, and it goes way beyond that."