Ath­letes from the Caribbean sel­dom make it to the Olympics in com­bat sports. How­ev­er, T&T's Daniel Dasent-Thom­son is at­tempt­ing to dis­pel this stereo­type by fight­ing in the heavy­weight di­vi­sion of taek­won­do.

He has de­vel­oped a tun­nel vi­sion work eth­ic in the pur­suit of his most im­por­tant ca­reer goal–be­com­ing one of the few ath­letes from the Caribbean to com­pete in this cat­e­go­ry at the Olympic Games.

The Pan-Amer­i­can Olympic Qual­i­fiers in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic on April 9 marks the start of that jour­ney. In the qual­i­fiers, on­ly two ath­letes will ad­vance from each weight di­vi­sion to the Paris Olympics in France set for Ju­ly/Au­gust, and Thomp­son hopes to be one of them.

The 26-year-old cred­its his love for the sport to his sec­ondary school­ing at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege where he dis­cov­ered Jung's Olympic Taek­won­do school. This was a rev­e­la­tion for Thom­son who heard about the sport at just 12 years old from a class­mate, the son of the very man who brought this form of mar­tial arts to T&T, Mas­ter In­se­ung Jung.

"I start­ed at their school in 2010 and de­spite be­ing in­volved in many sports, taek­won­do grad­u­al­ly be­came my main fo­cus over time," said Thom­son.

Be­fore at­tend­ing the Olympic Qual­i­fiers in San­to Domin­go, Thom­son has in­ten­tions of com­pet­ing a min­i­mum of two times to gauge his progress and what needs to be im­proved be­fore such a crit­i­cal tour­na­ment. Along­side these warm up tour­na­ments and his Mon­day to Sat­ur­day train­ing regime, the young­ster al­so im­ple­ments Sport-Sci­ence and Sport psy­chol­o­gy train­ing in­to his rou­tine. These forms of train­ing al­lows the ath­lete to keep abreast of such things as weight and mus­cle mass, which is cru­cial in a sport that has im­ple­ment­ed weight-class­es.

"Sport Sci­ence has af­fect­ed my train­ing quite pos­i­tive­ly. It's now much eas­i­er for me to as­sess and mon­i­tor my weight. It al­so guides me a lot in my dai­ly di­et," said the taek­won­do ath­lete, who was born in Port-of-Spain but grew up in Diego Mar­tin.

These forms of train­ing al­so iden­ti­fy the ath­lete's weak points and what is need­ed to be worked on, as op­posed to just gen­er­al phys­i­cal train­ing.

Thom­son will al­so be go­ing to an im­por­tant train­ing camp with the Suri­name Na­tion­al Taek­won­do Team to pre­pare for the Olympic Qual­i­fiers.

If qual­i­fi­ca­tion for a spot at Paris 2024 is achieved, Thom­son will be­come part of a very small group of Caribbean taek­won­do ath­letes in­clud­ing T&T's Cheryl Ann Sankar (2000 Syd­ney, Aus­tralia) and Chine­dum Os­u­ji (2004 Athens, Greece) to qual­i­fy for the Games.

Ob­tain­ing a medal at the Olympics would be tremen­dous for T&T and the Caribbean in gen­er­al, as no one in the re­gion has ever done this. The Taek­won­do in dreams of be­com­ing a pi­o­neer for taek­won­do in the re­gion with his Olympic en­deav­ours.

"For Taek­won­do in Trinidad, we have on­ly had two ath­letes qual­i­fy for the Olympics, with the last one be­ing in 2004. No one has ever medalled. So, my goal is to show that some­one from this re­gion can ac­tu­al­ly do it."

Thom­son is com­ing off a fourth-placed fin­ish at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games last year (where he was ranked fifth com­ing in­to the com­pe­ti­tion), and just miss­ing out on a medal seems to have giv­en the young taek­won­do ath­lete the dri­ve to push for greater things. Even though he is the lone men's rep­re­sen­ta­tive for this coun­try, Thom­son doesn't think that any oth­er coun­try has an ad­van­tage over T&T, even though he has faced top op­po­si­tion in the past from in­ter­na­tion­al ri­vals from the likes of North Amer­i­ca, whose ath­letes are al­ready es­tab­lished glob­al­ly. The T&T com­peti­tor sees a top-two fin­ish at the Pan-Am qual­i­fiers, and qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Paris 2024 as a re­al­is­tic goal.

He said, "I think my chances of a top two fin­ish are pret­ty good. With the work we have been do­ing up un­til now I feel very pos­i­tive. I know this isn't go­ing to be easy but I see it as a re­al­is­tic goal."

At­tend­ing these tour­na­ments and train­ing camps, along with ob­tain­ing new train­ing gear, is ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive and there­fore re­quires some as­sis­tance in be­ing able to make his­to­ry for T&T. Sup­port­ers of the dis­ci­pline and any­one will­ing can con­tribute to Thom­son's ef­fort by do­nat­ing on the fund­met­nt web­site us­ing the link: https://fund­met­nt.com/cam­paign/olympics-2024-jour­ney?