RIO DE JANEIRO—For Marestella Torres-Sunang, charting the twilight of her career is a no-brainer. She would no longer be competitive for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, but stressed she could be good for next year’s Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Malaysia and, if she remains healthy, the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia.
What worries Sunang is the future of women’s long jump in the Philippines.
“I have my apprehensions about the future of long jump in our country and I just feel sad about it. I don’t see anyone really taking over from me once I retire,” Sunang told BusinessMirror after officially declaring that Rio 2016 would be the last of her three consecutive Olympics on Tuesday at the Engenhao Olympic Stadium.
Sunang was not 100 percent in the women’s long-jump preliminaries at Rio 2016 after she hurt her left hip during the warm-up. She landed into a deep hole in the sand that was created by a Great Britain athlete who warmed up before her. Event managers failed to even the sand before Sunang took the runway.
The result was a horrendous 6.22 meters, 6.10 and 6.15 in three attempts for Sunang, all below the personal and season best of 6.72 meters she registered in qualifying for Rio at the Kazakhstan Open only last month. She landed at 28th place overall in a field of 38 runners.
Serbian Ivana Spanovic topped the list of eight medal hopefuls for Wednesday’s final with 6.87, followed by Germany’s Malaiko Mihambo (6.82), reigning Olympic champion Britney Reese (6.78) of the US, Estonia’s Ksenija Balta (6.78) and Tianna Bartoletta (6.70).
But Sunang was quick to move on from that Rio 2016 experience. She has shifted her focus toward next year’s SEA Games and the Asian Games after that. And, more important, at coaching and looking for an heir apparent.
“I am looking forward to a coaching career once this is all over. I just don’t want the experience I reaped from the three Olympics I took part in and from all other events I competed in to go to waste,” Sunang, now a mother of 2-and-a-half-year-old son Eliemar Matvie, said.
Sunang lamented the reality that, for now, and even in the near future, she sees no one making the grade. At 35, Sunang still lords it over the national open.
“It’s disappointing that the best-placed Filipino in the national open last summer could only jump to a little over 5 meters. And I did 6.6 meters,” said the brightest athlete to have emerge from San Jose, Negros Oriental.
Sunang, like Elma Muros-Posadas and Lerma Balauitan ahead of her, has a storied long-jump career. She won an elementary division gold as a sixth-grader and captured four straight mints as a high-school athlete at the Palarong Pambansa. The University Athletic Association of the Philippines was no different for Sunang, as she dominated during her time representing Far Eastern University.
The production line was in full throttle during those times. Muros-Posadas was still dominant at the SEA Games, winning a record-tying 15 golds, including eight long-jump titles she first won as a 16-year-old in 1983 in Singapore. She retired with a heptathlon title in 2001 in Kuala Lumpur.
Muros-Posadas has little or no worries at all for long jump’s future then. There was Balauitan, who defended the long-jump title at the Vietnam 2003 SEA Games. And there was Sunang, who took over at the 2005 Manila edition.
Sunang, who highlighted her career with an Asian Championships gold medal in 2009, made sure the long-jump title stayed with the Philippines and it was only at the 2013 Myanmar edition when the country went nil in the event. She was pregnant with his son.
She returned last year in Singapore and clinched the bronze medal. A year later, she’s in Brazil for a third consecutive Olympic appearance, the most by any Filipino.
Sunang promised an exciting 2017 SEA Games where she declared war against last year’s gold medal winner, Maria Londa of Indonesia. Londa won gold with a leap of 6.70 meters, 1 centimeter short of the games record Sunang set in Palembang in 2011.
“That would be an exciting showdown, I am sure of that,” Sunang said. She could not hide how excited she is with her duel with Londa, who finished three places ahead of her in Tuesday’s eliminations with 6.29 meters.
But long jump’s bleak future keeps haunting Sunang.
“Long jump is a difficult sport. It gets you dirty. And you can’t even train alone, you need someone to level the sand for you,” she said. “And it’s expensive. Most track and field athletes in the Philippines come from poor families, and when you’re poor you don’t have the resources to train and compete. That’s the sad part of it all.