U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : Dasse Will Go to Great Heights While Preparing to Throw Great Lengths

Prior to last month’s USA/Mobil track and field championships, Bonnie Dasse, one of the nation’s top female shotputters, was a wreck.

Consumed with her usual megadose of pre-meet anxiety, Dasse tried to tell herself there was no use worrying, but her brain had only one response:

“Yiiiiikes!”

Realizing she had to calm down quickly, Dasse resorted to drastic measures.

“I went to Magic Mountain and rode Viper,” Dasse said, referring to the amusement park’s latest ride. Roller coasters have always terrified her.

“I just screamed in bloody terror,” she said.

Then, on the day of the meet, Dasse went to see a matinee showing of “Total Recall.”

“It was a pretty gory action film,” she said. “So it helped.”

Dasse, who went on to finish third at the national championship behind winner Connie Price and longtime rival Ramona Pagel, seems to enjoy scaring herself. Especially before a major competition.

“I think I just thrive on that . . . that adrenaline thing,” said Dasse, an Irvine resident. “A roller coaster, a good speedboat ride. . . . It helps me to mellow.”

Dasse has made a habit of facing her fears.

Although she is terrified of heights, she once forced herself to climb the side of an 80-foot grain silo on her uncle’s farm in New Jersey.

“I forced myself to do it, just to test myself,” Dasse, 30, said. “But when I got up there, I froze. I literally froze. Rigor mortis set in. I had to wait for my father to rescue me.”

And despite the fact that Dasse has continual nightmares about tornadoes--”It’s like I’m looking out my window and I see five touch down at once,” she said--she said her lifetime goal is to witness a tornado up close and personal.

“You know how some people always want to see the Eiffel Tower?” Dasse said. “I want to see a tornado. If I ever get free time, I’m taking the entire month of May and going to Oklahoma. They say that’s the prime time for tornadoes.”

Next week, Dasse, a graduate of Costa Mesa High School, Orange Coast College and San Diego State, will compete at the U.S. Olympic Festival at Minneapolis. The shotput competition is scheduled for July 15.

This will be the fifth Olympic Festival appearance for Dasse, who won the shotput at this meet in 1986 and ’87 and was runner-up in ’83 and ’89.

Dasse, who in 1986 set an Olympic Festival record with a mark of 59-feet 6 3/4-inches, watched that mark beaten last year by Price, who threw 59-10 1/2. Dasse would like to get the record back.

The problem, she said, is that her two main rivals, Price and Pagel, are competing in Europe and will not be attending the Festival.

“When you don’t have Connie or Ramona there, it’s hard to get nervous,” Dasse said. “The Olympic Festival I really enjoy because you’re there with all the other sports, but . . . I can’t say I’ll have butterflies.”

Perhaps that is in Dasse’s best interests. In past competitions, nervousness has always been a problem. Her greatest moment, she said, came at a time when she was unusually calm. That was during the qualifying rounds at the 1988 Olympic Games at Seoul.

Dasse joined the U.S. contingent at a one-week training camp in Japan.

“It was awesome, like a country club--totally stress free,” she said. Dasse said her chances of making the Olympic team were slim. Still, the night before the qualifying rounds, she was completely focused.

“At the qualifying, I was like, ‘It’ll be a miracle if I make it to the final.’ But I went in and warmed up and my technique was right on the money.”

She threw 63-9 3/4--just off her career best of 63-11 1/2--and was the only American to qualify for the final, finishing 11th out of 12 qualifiers.

“It was totally unexpected,” she said. “I was just going crazy. I was so excited. It was a dream.”

But that night, with the finals the next day, Dasse said she let herself get caught up in dreamy hopes instead of concentrating on the task at hand.

“I started thinking too much, and I got nervous,” she said. “I hadn’t expected to make the final, and suddenly I’m thinking ‘What if?’ . . . I got butterflies and the whole bit and the next day it was like a total burnout. I threw 57 (actually 57-9). The problem was I put pressure on myself in the finals. I didn’t do that (in the qualifying).”

Although Dasse learned a lesson at Seoul, it wasn’t until last month’s USA/Mobil meet that her key to success--be hyped for competition, but not too hyped--really sunk in.

“I’ve always gotten very nervous,” she said. “At the (1988) Olympic Trials, I tried to read a book--a mellow book--but every time I read, my stomach would get going and I’d just throw the book down. That’s when you have an overdose of adrenaline. The butterflies are like breeding inside.

“Now I know I can control it. (Prior to the USA/Mobil meet) I had to lay down for about an hour before nationals to calm down, and it worked. For the first time, I was able to control the butterflies.

“I call it relaxed intensity. That’s how I throw my best. At work, I had to tell myself ‘I don’t care what happens today. I don’t care if the building gets flattened by an earthquake. I am going to be calm.’ ”