Cogratulations Team USA Medalists!!

Deontay Wilder - Heavyweight - BRONZE

Henry Cejudo- Freestyle - GOLD

Randi Miller - Women's Freestyle - BRONZE

Adam Wheeler - Greco-Roman-BRONZE

Ronda Rousey - BRONZE

Mark Lopez - SILVER

Diana Lopez - BRONZE

Steven Lopez - BRONZE

Lopez Family Kicking for Taekwondo History

Mark LOPEZ - SILVER
Diana Lopez - BRONZE
Steven Lopez  - BRONZE

After suffering his first-ever defeat in three Olympic Games, and first loss in six years, welterweight Steven Lopez (Sugar Land, Texas) rebounded to win a bronze medal Friday night at the Beijing University of Science and Technology Gymnasium.

Italy's Mauro Sarmiento, the eventual silver medalist, defeated Lopez in sudden-death overtime in the quarterfinal round. When Sarmiento advanced to the finals, Lopez was entered into the repechage for one of two bronze medals. Lopez defeated Sebastien Konan from the Ivory Coast, 3-0, and then defeated Azerbaijan's Rashad Ahmadov for the bronze medal, 3-2.

The bronze medal gives the Lopez siblings three medals at the Beijing Games. Diana Lopez captured bronze in the women's featherweight division and Mark Lopez was the silver medalist in the men's featherweight class.

Source:  USA Taekwondo

By ERIC TALMADGE - USOC via AP August 8, 2008
http://www.usolympicteam.com/news/article/3359

BEIJING (AP) Since about as long as she can remember, Diana Lopez has been fighting with her three brothers. Not just little skirmishes or disagreements over bathroom rights, but the all-out, kick-and-punch kind of fighting.

Her parents encouraged it. In fact, it was their dad's idea. And it all seems to be working out pretty well.

The fighting Lopez family - Diana and her older brothers Mark and Steven, with eldest sibling Jean as their coach - are the first trio from the same family to represent the United States at the Olympics since 1904.

They made history when they each won their weight class at the 2005 world taekwondo championships - a feat no three siblings had ever accomplished in the same sport in the same year. Now, having all made the U.S. team, they are making their first appearance together in the Olympics and are ready to make history again.

The last U.S. Olympic trio - Edward, Richard and William Tritschler - failed to medal, in gymnastics.

But the Lopezes are all gold medal contenders.

"I feel like it is almost unfair," said Steven, who at 29 already has two Olympic golds and four world championship titles. "It's like when we go into the ring, it's four to one."

Coach Jean, himself a silver medalist at the 1995 world championships, said fighting comes naturally in his family.

"We have a combative nature," he said. "Taekwondo is just man-against-man, or woman-against-woman, and I think that is what captivated us."

Jean said the family found taekwondo, a Korean martial art that is focused on fast, high kicking, by chance.

His father, Julio, had always liked kung fu movies, and there was a martial arts school just down the street from their house.

"It just happened to be taekwondo," he said.

Jean was soon hooked, and the others were enrolled by their parents not so much as a sporting activity but to instill in them discipline, respect and confidence.

Now, they have helped put taekwondo on the U.S. sports horizon. Steven, for example, was named one of People magazine's hottest bachelors for 2004 - not a common honor for an athlete from an event many Americans still can't pronounce.

By the time they were teens, sparring was a part of life. But fighting in the ring, when it's a family matter, has some different rules.

"My brothers take it easy on their baby sister," said Diana, who will compete in the under 57-kilogram division on Aug. 21. "But I can kick as hard as I want."

"Sometimes she'll graze my face, and I'll think, 'Hey, I just got kicked by my sister,'" said Mark, who also fights on Aug. 21, in the under 68-kilogram class. "It reminds me to try to kick faster."

To train for the games, the Lopez family - along with Charlotte Craig, the fourth member of the U.S. team - spent 10 days in Singapore getting acclimatized and, more importantly, getting used to being away from their home in Sugar Land, Texas, where Jean runs the Elite Taekwondo school.

To save money, Diana and Mark shared a room.

"That was kind of weird," Diana said.

"There are times when I may feel I need to get away," she said. "But if I'm not getting along with Mark, I'll hang out with Steve, and if I'm not getting along with him, there's Jean."

Though Steven has cause to be confident - he hasn't lost a bout since 2002 - the road to gold for Diana and Mark will tough. Both will be fighting against South Korean opponents, and South Korea has never failed to get at least a bronze out of the eight competitors it has sent since taekwondo joined the Olympic roster in 2000.

"The Korean team is a very strong team," Diana said. "Korea is very good at being technical and efficient. But Mark and I make it a fight. We are very confident, and we know our job."

No Koreans are in Steven's weight category, the under 80-kilogram class. Instead, he said that he expects his toughest competition to come from Turkey and Iran.

But he isn't especially worried - for himself or for Mark and Diana.

"The goals, our expectations, are to go out there and win gold medals," he said. "In my opinion, they are ready. This Olympics is very special to us because we will be walking into the opening ceremony as a family."

Mark, 26, was even more confident.

"We are here to make a statement," he said. "We are the best in the world."

Taekwondo begins on Aug. 20 and concludes Aug. 23.

University of North Texas Psychologist to Support U.S. Taekwondo Team

University of North Texas Psychologist to Support U.S. Taekwondo Team

From a UNT News Service press release

Many Americans only dream of attending an Olympic games in person.

But Karen Cogan, an assistant professor of psychology at UNT, has been invited to the Olympics three times to support U.S. athletes.

As a sport psychologist with the U.S. Olympic Taekwondo Team this year, Cogan will provide a listening ear and helpful advice to team members competing at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. She traveled with team members and their coaches to Beijing for an Olympic test event after attending a qualifying event to select the team members last year.

Cogan already has witnessed sport history made at two Winter Olympics – Salt Lake City in 2002 and Torino, Italy, in 2006. As a sport psychologist with the U.S. Freestyle Mogul Team, she helped to provide support to the coaches and athletes - including silver medalists Travis Mayer and Shannon Bahrke in 2002 and bronze medalist Toby Dawson in 2006.

"One of the administrators with the mogul team is now an administrator with the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and he recommended me to the team because I had done good work with the mogul team," Cogan says, adding that she accepted the job as sport psychologist in the 2008 Olympics even though she knew nothing about taekwondo, a Korean martial art and combat sport.

"I asked a lot of questions and learned the terminology. Just by watching, I picked up a lot of things," she says.

Taekwondo is famed for its use of kicking techniques, which distinguishes it from martial arts such as karate or southern styles of kung fu. Under Olympic rules, sparring takes place between two competitors in an area measuring 10 meters square. Each match or bout consists of three nonstop rounds of contact with rest between rounds. Points are awarded for permitted, accurate and powerful techniques to the legal scoring areas; light contact to a scoring area does not score any points.

Cogan says mental preparation and training for taekwondo athletes is, in some respects, very similar to that of other athletes, including the mogul skiers she's counseled.

"Personal issues and anxiety can get in the way of best performances. There's also pressure from well-meaning family members and friends who want to get tickets to competitions and have other requests, and the ability to handle media attention," she says.

Cogan works with athletes on:

• relaxation
  
• management of anxiety
  
• positive thinking
  
• goal setting

"I help them devise some sort of plan or routine leading into the competition that becomes more personal for each athlete," she says.

With the mogul team, Cogan helped competitors who were frustrated with lack of practice time on a course. She pointed out that the team had to make special arrangements before the competition season to go someplace where there is snow, and hope that there is enough snow for training.

"They're lucky if they get 40 days on the snow during the training camps in a year," she says.

Instead of worrying about training conditions, taekwondo athletes may feel anxiety over their opponents, having to anticipate the others' techniques, and over scoring. Unlike mogul skiing - in which athletes compete for the fastest speed down a 27-degree hill that is between 755 and 885 feet high - taekwondo is "a very subjective sport" for scoring, Cogan says.

"Even if you have one of the best fights of your life, you can still lose based on the scoring. And coaches have believed there has been some bias against the U.S. by judges in the past, so it's hard for an athlete or coach to stay focused when he or she doesn't believe a fair call has been made," she says. "The competitions are also single elimination, so if the judging isn't fair, the athlete doesn't have a second chance."

Cogan says her biggest challenge with the taekwondo team, which has not had a formal sport psychology program in the past, is building strong enough relationships with the coaches and athletes so that they feel comfortable to talk to her, but not be intrusive. She has already conducted several interventions with team members.

"I have provided them with a firm foundation of mental skills, and now we are down to maintenance as they go into the Olympics," she says.

UNT News Service press release
Nancy Kolsti can be reached at nkolsti@unt.edu.