March 11, 2004
By PAUL FRIESEN -- Winnipeg Sun

Bosshart has Athens on her mind

She was a farmer's daughter about to compete at one of the world's most famous sports venues, but Dominique Bosshart didn't have a clue.

Didn't have a clue about Madison Square Garden. Didn't have a clue she was about to dominate her sport, nationally, for the next decade-plus.

And she certainly didn't have a clue what in the world her coach was talking about.

It was 1993, and Bosshart, a 15-year-old from tiny Landmark, about 30 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, was in New York for the world taekwondo championships. She had just won her first of 11 straight Canadian titles at the nationals in Winnipeg -- in her first try, no less.

Now, Landmark is a long way from the Big Apple, but that day in New York, Bosshart's coach, Jay Kang, obviously believed his protege was going to go a lot further before she was through.

"He says to me, 'You have to assign your life to me until 2000,' " Bosshart recalls of the conversation, 11 years later. "He's thinking of the Olympic Games, right? I'm 15 years old at the time. I'm looking at him like he's a crazy guy. I'm like, 'OK, sure, whatever' ... smile and nod kind of thing, right?"

Turns out Kang was bang-on.

Because seven years later, the shy tomboy, who as a kid had to be talked into signing up for taekwondo, found herself at the Olympics in Sydney.

That would be a good story on its own. What happened next, though, puts it right over the top.

Out-duelling athletes from Finland, Venezuela and Croatia, Bosshart came out of nowhere to win the bronze medal.

Not bad for someone who took up the martial art at 13 only because her younger brother "basically bothered me until I would go with him."

"He knows that I'm thankful that he dragged me out," Bosshart says.

This August, Bosshart will be out to prove Sydney was no fluke, as she takes her fourth-degree black belt to Athens.

Qualifying for her second Olympics was no easy task, though.

For starters, confusion over the qualification process left her unsure as to whether she'd accumulated enough points at the Pan Am Games and world championships in order to reach the qualification tournament in Paris in early December.

After considerable stress, she made it to Paris, but fell short.

That left Queretaro, Mexico, Jan. 30-31 -- her last chance to qualify.

"There are so many things that kind of happened that left me wondering, 'Am I going to make this?' " Bosshart says. "We had some issues with the selection criteria. I didn't know if I had performed well enough at the world championships. It made me feel unsure if it was meant to be."

Intensive training camps

When the pressure's on, Bosshart heads for Korea, the birthplace of the sport. The intensive training camps there helped her prepare for Sydney, and she was hoping they would pay off again.

"I kind of compare it to when people play golf with brutal players, and they don't play so well," Bosshart says. "And then you play with really good players, and you tend to play better."

Everything fell into place after that, and Bosshart was on her way to Greece.

But this 26-year-old isn't satisfied with a simple return to the world's biggest stage.

"I definitely expect to perform as well, if not better, than I did in Sydney," Bosshart says. "Though I won a bronze medal there, and not better than that, I felt like I performed really well. This time, I want the same kind of performance, but a better result."

That's a lot to ask, but Bosshart has one thing going for her she didn't have in Sydney: Olympic experience.

"Going into the Games, I hopefully won't be overwhelmed," she says. "I'll kind of know what to expect of the place, and what kind of feelings might come up, sort of the psychology I'll have to have going in."

Talking to her old coach, psychology is everything for Bosshart.

"If she has a little fear, then she cannot perform," Kang says. "This is her weak point. If she doesn't have that, then she can perform so good."

You won't get an argument from Bosshart.

"It's always mental," she says. "I try to think positive thoughts and not let doubts get me down."

These days, Kang isn't as involved with Bosshart's career as he used to be.

He's semi-retired, and she spends more and more time training in Toronto, where the competition is a notch more intense than it is at Kang's Winnipeg academy.

But the grand master remains a guiding force in Bosshart's life.

And why not? Giving him seven years of her life made her an Olympian, even though she had her doubts at the time.

"At 15, there's so many factors," Bosshart says. "Things that could go wrong or lead you astray or God knows what. So I didn't really have that vision or dream for a long time. And then in '99, I really started thinking, 'Wow, I could actually do this, and make it there.' "

She liked it so much, she did it again.

THE BOSS'S PLAN

What's ahead for Dominique Bosshart as she prepares for the Athens Games:

• Currently training daily at Young Choung's Taekwondo Academy in Toronto.
• Canadian Championships in Kingston, April 3-4 (Bosshart has won her weight category, 67kg-plus, 11 straight times)
• The Olympic Weight Category Nationals in Toronto, mid-May.
• The Mexican Open, end of May (maybe).
• Training camps in Korea, June and July.
• Olympic Games event, Aug. 29.
  

reprinted with permission