THE Canadian Olympic wrestling trials go this weekend in Winnipeg and one North Vancouver pintsized powerhouse will be there looking to take down a legend.
Ashley McKilligan is ranked third in the 48 kilogram women's freestyle division and she's hoping to move up to No. 1 to earn the country's one Olympic berth. To get there, however, she'll likely have to go through Carol Huynh, the division's top-ranked wrestler who also happens to be the defending Olympic gold medalist, her 2008 win giving her that instant hero status that all Canadian Olympic champions seem to receive. The list of people in awe of Huynh included a young Ashley McKilligan.
"I used to watch her Olympic final as a way to pump me up," she says with a laugh. After graduating from Argyle secondary, McKilligan went to Simon Fraser University where Huynh also trained. "We wrestled once when I was like 18 and she kicked the crap out of me."
McKilligan, however, got better. Coming into this weekend's trials she holds a trump card that no one else in her division can claim: she's the only one who has ever beaten Huynh. McKilligan defeated her old training partner at the 2009 Hargobind International tournament in Burnaby. Huynh got her back at last year's Canadian nationals to take a 2-1 advantage in head-to-head meetings but it was a very close match. McKilligan says the way to beat a hero is to forget that she's a hero.
"I have to think of her as another competitor. When we wrestle she's just a body on the mat, she's two legs, two arms. She's not Carol - if I think 'I'm wrestling Carol, she's an Olympic champion' . . . then I get tight and I get anxious and I'm not thinking about what I'm doing."
If she does end up facing Huynh again with an Olympic berth on the line her plan is to stick to her guns, McKilligan says.
"Carol is very tall, she's lanky and she knows how to use that to her advantage," she says. "I'm short and I'm strong and I'm pretty fast. . . . I put a lot of pressure on my opponents and I try to make them feel uncomfortable. You know in MMA they have those 'ground and pound' fighters? I'm like a ground and pound wrestler. I don't have super flashy, funky moves. I just kind of get the job done."
McKilligan certainly got the job done at this year's Hargobind, held last month in Burnaby, where she defeated twotime world junior champion Victoria
Anthony from California in an action-packed final and was named outstanding female for the tournament. The championship victory involved a rare last-second throw that got the crowd fired up, gave McKilligan a win in the first period of the final and put her on the road to victory. The move she pulled off is one she picked up from her first coach, North Shore wrestling guru Ian McDonald, back at Balmoral junior secondary.
"It's called a hip toss but it's a variation that Ian actually taught me," she says. "I guess I still had it in my back pocket to pull out."
McKilligan and McDonald go back a long way. He recruited her, with the help of her twin brother Adam, to the Balmoral team when the siblings were in Grade 8.
"Ian used to hound me down in the halls, in gym class and tell me to come out to wrestling," Ashley says with a laugh. "I went to practice to kind of appease him . . . I loved it."
He's not her primary coach anymore - that position has belonged to Todd Hinds of the University of Saskatchewan since McKilligan moved to Saskatoon to train last fall - but McDonald is still offering support and advice whether she asks for it or not.
"I won the (Hargobind) tournament, I wrestled quite well. I came off the mat and Ian had made his way over and he starts bugging me about all the stuff that I did wrong," she says, laughing again. "He was like, 'Good match, but. . . .' And that's what's great about Ian. He's always pushed me to be better."
McKilligan will have to be at her best to beat Huynh, but she's taking confidence from the fact that past medals are no help when an opponent is bearing down on you.
"I try to remember that every match is a new match, your past is not indicative of your future," she says. "That's the thing I love about wrestling: anybody can beat anybody on any given day. I have confidence in the fact that I have done everything I can to prepare, so it's just kind of about laying it all out on the day. Just because (Carol) won an Olympic medal in August of 2008 . . . doesn't mean that she's going to beat me on that day. I believe in myself."
Win it all this weekend and she'll get a chance to become the next Carol Huynh.
"That gives me butterflies," she says as she ponders what it would mean to her to go to the Olympic Games. "It would mean everything."
