DALIAN, China (AP) – He is too short, too small, too raw, too … everything to be here. Yet somehow Leo Manzano made his way.

To America. To a better life. To the Olympics.

Born in Mexico and endowed with his American citizenship four years ago, Manzano’s is one of three success stories that began years ago in different lands and will come together in the 1,500-meter race at the Beijing Games.

Manzano (Mexico), Lopez Lomong (Sudan) and Bernard Lagat (Kenya) were all born in places where poverty and fear grabbed hold of so many lives and often controlled them. They now find themselves representing their adopted country, on the verge of living an Olympic version of the American dream.

On Aug. 15, they begin the quest to give back to the United States in the form of Olympic medals. Their race is the 1,500 meters – but their journeys have been about so much more than four laps around the track.

“My dad made me realize what things are really worth,” the 23-year-old Manzano said this week at the U.S. track team’s training camp.

When he was 4, Manzano was smuggled over the border by friends of the family to join his dad, Jesus. Jesus worked odd jobs in America and made more than a dozen risky trips back and forth to Mexico to bring the money home. Eventually, the entire family was united in the States. It took 15 more years for Leo to finally get his citizenship.

“I’m really grateful for everything he’s done,” Manzano said of his father. “Just coming to America. There are so many things it makes me really appreciate.”

Lomong was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan – separated at the point of a gun from his family at age 6, escaped with other kids to a refugee camp in Kenya, then given a new life by adoptive parents in America at 16.

His first brush with the Olympics came in 2000 when he and some friends ran five miles and paid five shillings to watch Michael Johnson on a black-and-white TV with a fuzzy screen. It was the first time Lomong realized running could be for fun, not just to survive.

“I used that to kind of motivate myself and see how hard people work and how proud people are to represent their country,” Lomong said Monday at training camp. “From that point on, I was like, ‘Man, I want to go to the Olympics.”‘

Lagat, who already owns two Olympic medals, is the most accomplished runner in the threesome. He grew up in Kenya, moved to America in 1996 and longed to be a citizen in this country, not just a visitor.

His wish finally came true in 2004, but even then, he couldn’t celebrate; he had to hide his new citizenship until after the Olympics, so he wouldn’t be declared ineligible to run for his native Kenya.

Having waited the required three years before being able to join the American team, he won the 1,500 and 5,000 last year at the world championships and lived the dream of standing on the medals podium wearing red, white and blue to go with his gold.

World championships are one thing. The Olympics are another.

“The best thing that could happen for me is winning the gold for the United States,” Lagat said in an interview this spring. “Being an American is not something I’m going to take lightly. When I took that oath, I meant every piece of it.”

Watching these naturalized Americans in the same event will offer a refreshing reminder of what the Olympics are supposed to be about. It is a celebration of sport, a coming together of nations and, maybe most significantly, a chance to wear your country’s name on the front of your uniform, not your own on the back.

Nobody appreciates the chance more than Leo, Lopez and Lagat.

Manzano is arguably the most unlikely Olympian of the three. At 5-foot-5, 125 pounds, he only recently turned professional. A senior for the University of Texas, he ran as an amateur at world championships last year and got a sobering dose of the realities of prostyle running.

Elbows flew. Heels got clipped. Earning prime position on the track came at a cost.

So Manzano learned how someone his size must run – getting to the front early, staying out of the crowds, not necessarily waiting for the inevitable late charge. The strategy earned him a surprising second place at Olympic trials and a trip to Beijing.

Later this week, his parents will get on an airplane for the first time ever to watch their son compete in Beijing. Manzano has an endorsement contract with Nike that “makes things a little easier on everyone,” he said. Not bad for a kid who took up running simply so he could get out of cutting lawns and digging in flower beds – what his parents wanted him to do to bring a bit of money home and contribute to the cause.

“When I told them I was going to run they were actually kind of mad at me, like, ‘What are you doing?”‘ Manzano said. “But when they noticed where this could take me, they changed. They became totally supportive.”

Lagat has the best chance of becoming a true Olympic star. He will run in the 1,500 and the 5,000 – the longer race is his specialty – and having been to the Olympics twice before and winning silver and bronze, he knows what it’s like to get close.

No American has won the 5,000 since 1964, and no U.S. runner has ever won the 5,000 and the 1,500.

“This is a dream come true,” Lagat said when he qualified for the Olympics last month, this time as an American. “This is very special running tonight. Now, I’m part of the USA going to Beijing. I’m very excited.”

Lomong says he thinks it’s more than coincidence that he has been joined with Lagat and Manzano in this event.

He also thinks there’s a reason he gained his citizenship on July 6, 2007 and became an American Olympian exactly one year later – at trials on July 6, 2008.

He believes in good timing … and second chances … and hard work – elements that have helped him, and so many others, become a success in the United States.

“Everybody in America came from somewhere,” Lomong said. “I have different roots, Leo has different roots, Bernard has different roots. But now our roots are in America, and this is where we all come together and, say, ‘Hey, let’s all go out there and represent our country.’

“We’re part of a team now.”