Pacific Daily News from Agana Heights, Guam • Page A48

SPORTS guampdn.com Friday, June 1, 2012 48 on Guam Pacific Daily News Ric Blas Jr. is the first athlete from Guam to qualify officially for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Blas, a judoka, will compete in the 100-plus-kilogram weight division. He previously qualified for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Maria Dunn, another Guam Olympian from the 2008 Games, was awarded a tripartite allocation for the sport of female wrestling in the 68-kilogram weight division.

The Guam National Olympic Committee received notice from the International Cycling Union that Derek Horton, a third Guam Olympian, qualified in the mountain bike event. Horton represented Guam at the 2000 Olympics Games in Sydney, Australia. Blas most recently won a bronze medal at the USAWorld Judo Championships in Miami, Fla. This year has been a busy and highly competitive year for him. By joining the European judo competition circuit, where some of the most dominant judokas originate from, Blas fought some of the strongest com- petitors and gained a new perspective on the European style of judo.

This year was particularly challenging for Dunn in her quest to qualify for the Olympics because the rules of qualification changed for her sport. If the rules had remained the same as the 2008 Games, then she would have qualified for the 2012 Games in January at the Oceania Wrestling Championships in Australia when By Jordan Jugo Pacific Daily News Stephanie and Michelle Caluag both are students at George Washington University in Washington D.C., both are second-degree black belts in taekwondo and both won medals at the 37th National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships held April 7 and 8 in Cambridge at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The two sisters competed in the poomsae division, which is taekwondo forms, and the sparring division. More than 600 athletes from more than 100 colleges and universities participated in the event, according to the National Collegiate Taekwondo Association website. Stephanie Caluag competed in the bantamweight division and won bronze in poomsae, performing keumgang, the form for second-degree black belts.

spent hours practicing my form, which paid off because I ended up winning bronze. Competing in poomsae entails such attention to the little details of the form. It requires concentration and focus because a slight mistake can mean an automatic point said Stephanie Caluag, who also competed two years ago and placed fourth in poomsae. had to practice the form over and over again until the correctness of the form became instinct. My body just moved from memory.

I performed almost robot- Although she placed in the forms division, she was unable to replicate that success in the sparring division, which was contested in a single- elimination bracket. She lost 10-6 in the first round to an opponent from the University of California in Berkeley who ended up winning bronze. competition was definitely fiercer this year because it was a national-team qualifier. All gold-medal winners earned a spot on the U.S. national collegiate taekwondo team and moved on to compete in Pon- cheon, Korea for the 12th World University Taekwondo said Stephanie Caluag, who is majoring in journalism in her senior year at GWU.

Father was ecstatic She added that her parents were unable to make the trip to watch them compete, however, their father, Noly Caluag, was ecstatic to receive the good news about his daughters winning at the big show. very proud of them as parents and glad able to excel in taekwondo. just happy they were not said Noly Caluag, who has been teaching his daughters taekwondo for the past 14 years. told them to train hard and stay focused. I told them to prepare for the worst and expect the Michelle Caluag, the younger of the two sisters, won silver in the middleweight division in poomsae, but lost her first match in sparring to an opponent from Arizona State, who ended up winning silver in the end.

was my first time competing at the collegiate level. I competed in a lot of island tournaments, but this was my first off-island said Michelle Caluag, who currently is a sophomore and plans to major in communications. was pretty amazing. The whole time during my form, I was in the zone. The people in my division were on the national team, and I never thought forms would be my said Michelle Caluag.

With hundreds of taekwondo note: This weekly column looks at the global phenomenon of multi-country, multi-sport events or Games and their wide-ranging effect on the world of sport and beyond. Recently I had the pleasure of assisting one ultra-marathoner who ran the 48 miles of the perimeter relay by herself. During the race, another runner encouraged her with words that I thought were nothing short of Olympic. He simply said, forward progress The Olympic Games stand for many things, but there is no doubt that at their core there is an expectation of striving continually for the expansion of human potential. Of course, this is by design.

Pierre de Coubertin and others recognized the immense power contained in the human desire to push past boundaries. They also knew that using sport to focus this desire could produce great things. The Olympic motto of Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) clearly shows the value the Olympic movement places on the endless struggle to improve. Over the years many athletes have taken this motto to heart. Not long ago people considered running a sub-4 minute mile, jumping unassisted over a bar set above 8 feet or lifting three times body weight over their head impossible.

Now these incredible feats are seen in the rearview mirror of human progress. Pierre de Coubertin spoke of the four years between Olympic Games, the time when athletes should train and develop, as the most important part of the process. Last week I asked, the world ready for What I meant was, there indications that the elite athletes are ready to push the boundaries of sport forward in the upcoming While no one can answer this question until these athletes are put to the test, there are some pretty clear signs of the greatness in store for this summer. On the one hand there is the return to the Games of veteran heroes who have dominated their sport See Games Page 45 Athletes will move human race forward Guam Olympic team taking shape Caluag sisters strive for gold Photo courtesy of George Washington University Taekwondo Club Medals: Michelle Caluag, left, and Stephanie Caluag show the medals they won in the poomsae division at the 37th National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships held April 7 and 8 in Cambridge at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. See Olympics Page 45 See Caluag Page 47.