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By JOHN ROMANO
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 2, 2000
You must sleep before you can dream. In Barb Kunkel's case, a little anesthesia was required.
A dozen years ago, Kunkel was a junior college basketball player who somehow knew she would make her mark as an athlete.
She did not realize exactly how until she found herself facing reconstructive knee surgery for the second time.
Doctors told Kunkel if she continued to play basketball, she would run the risk of permanently damaging her knees. Unwilling to accept the prognosis, she began a vigorous rehabilitation program to work her way back.
She would swim, she would play racquetball, she would work with a physical therapist. She also got interested in martial arts, figuring the exercises would hasten her return.
Kunkel never made it back to college basketball. Instead, she became one of the world's top athletes in tae kwon do and in May earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
"I never stopped loving basketball," Kunkel said recently at an Olympic media summit in Houston. "It's just that I got consumed with tae kwon do. I would spend all day with it. I couldn't get enough."
The Tacoma, Wash., native began with free karate classes at a local gym, but soon discovered a tae kwon do school nearby.
She spent weeks observing classes before getting up the nerve to join. Her teacher, Sang Hyuk Cha, spoke little English, so Kunkel began learning Korean to make the lessons easier.
Kunkel went so far as to begin attending classes at an elementary school for Korean children.
Her rise in the sport was fairly rapid, considering the number of years it takes to learn the discipline.
Kunkel began tae kwon do at 19 and, by 24, won a bronze medal in the U.S. national championships. She eventually moved to Colorado Springs to work at the U.S. Olympic training center.
At 30, Kunkel's career as a competitor in tae kwon do might be winding down but her involvement in the sport is not.
She has worked as a tae kwon do instructor and is planning to open a school.
"If I stayed in basketball, I probably would have been done playing a long time ago," Kunkel said. "Tae kwon do is more than a sport, it's a part of my life."
FULL-BODY TREATMENT: USA Swimming coach Mark Schubert said he is not sure whether it is a psychological or physical difference, but he has no doubt new, full-body swimsuits have been at least partly responsible for the recent run of world records.
Since FINA, the international governing body for swimming, approved the suits in November, nine world records have been broken.
Out of concern that not all swimmers would have access to the new suits, USA Swimming has banned them from the trials but U.S. athletes can wear the suits at the Games.
THE ENEMY AMONG US: Ian Thorpe, the teenage swimming sensation, has become so popular in his native Australia, he has a difficult time avoiding distractions during training. Thorpe recently went to Colorado to work in peace at the U.S. Olympic Complex.
A FINE MESS: Bela Karolyi thought he had set up the gymnastics team selection process to give him greater input. He may have thought wrong. Instead of going strictly by scoring at the trials or other events, USA Gymnastics gave a committee, headed by Karolyi, greater leeway in choosing the six-person team.
The problem is the recently named four-person committee might not be on the same page as Karolyi. Two of the committee members, 1984 gymnast Tracee Talavera and judge Marilyn Cross, have not been to any of the training camps Karolyi has been running near his Houston gym the past six months. So will Talavera and Cross be judging by the same criteria as Karolyi?
"The selection situation," Karolyi said in a conference call last week, "is still messy."
FINAL WORD: Basketball player Teresa Edwards on new Olympic coach Nell Fortner: "You have a tendency to slack off when you're playing for a coach you like. You play better when you don't like the coach. She's a very likable person. I'm teaching myself not to like her."
- Information from other news organizations was used in this report.