“She fought a very good fight and is now at peace,” so said Stephanie “Paneng” Mercado-de Koenigswarter as she announced the death of her mother, former Asian Sprint Queen Lydia de Vega, the other day.
Indeed, Diay, as De Vega is called by her peers and relatives, must be really at peace now. But to those who knew her deeper, the former fastest woman in Asia joined her Creator frustrated about her last dream remaining unrealized.
For even when she was still active in successfully carrying the country’s colors in all sporting capital in the world, the pretty lady from Meycauayan, Bulacan, was never very vocal in expressing her desire to help Filipino athletes develop and molded into world beaters like she and her contemporaries were.
In 2019, this writer, again and for the last time, heard from her as we, along with “Paneng,” were having lunch at a popular restaurant fronting the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros following the mother-and-child’s guesting at the Sports Communicators Organization of the Philippines Forum.
Diay took respite from her job as coach-trainer in Singapore to play the role as one of the flag-bearers in the opening ceremony of the 30th Southeast Asian Games the country was hosting that year.
With Diay in that memorable occasion were Akiko Thompson-Guevarra, a seven-time SEA games gold medalist; 15-time SEA Games gold medalist for swimming Eric Buhain; and Alvin Patrimonio, also SEA Games gold medalist for basketball;
With them were Efren “Bata” Reyes, four-time 8-ball world champion; Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco, two-time SEA Games gold medalist and Olympic silver medalist for boxing; Olivia “Bong” Coo, four-time Tenpin bowling world champion; and Rafael “Paeng” Nepomuceno, six-time bowling world champion.
Diay, you see, left the country following her stint as a Philippine Sports Commission consultant right after the Philippines won the SEA Games overall championship in 2005 along with several other former athletes like baseball’s Filomeno “Boy” Codinera, basketball’s Turo Valenzona and trackster Mona Sulaiman, among others.
She accepted a long standing offer to coach in at least four educational institutions in Singapore.
“Are you asking me how am I doing in Singappre?” Diay asked this reporter to open our conversation. “Well, since I arrived in Singapore, I taught them sprint, coached and trained future athletes, mostly in elementary school level.”
“And as of this date [2019], modesty aside, I produced fresh and young talents who became members of that country’s national team,” she said with her trade mark smile.
“I’m happy because my efforts have bore fruits after a decade-and-a-half,” Diay narrated before turning a sad face.
“But I’m sad. Instead of Filipino, I’m teachning Singaporean who’ll be our athletes’ opponents in the future!” she exclaimed.
“But this is my profession and it’s my job to teach, no matter that race or nationality,” she lamented. “I wanted, as much as possible, to impart what I’ve learned as an international athlete to the Filipino youth,” she said. “But unfortunately, I’m not lucky enough to be appointed coach in our own country. Still I told myself, ‘wait a little longer, maybe my wish will come true.’”
That won’t happen anymore, of course. Never!
“It’s not only me, you know,” she added. “That’s also the problem of my contemporaries. Almost all of us want to serve our country through the methods that we know of.”
“But based on our experience, it seemed we have no place here,” a Far Eastern University star in many University Athletic Asociation of the Philippines athletics competions, said.
“That’s what makes former athletes’ lives sad. We aren’t tapped to serve our future athletes,” Diay said. “Don’t tell us that we don’t have the mindset and skills to do that and that we didn’t learn anything about our sport as athletes.”
Diay was first celebrated her rise as “Asia’s Fastest Woman” and “Asia’s Sprint Queen” in 1979 when she strung victorious in almost every race she saw action in. In this writer’s account, she had participated in 95 races since she was discovered a year or so earlier.
Of this total, 53 were in the international field, including a pair of International Amateur Athletic Federation (now World Athletics) championships. During the SCOOP’s Awards Night that year, when she was enshrined to the organizations’ Hall of Fame, De Vega had won 14 gold medals in her favorite 100 meters, eight in 200 meters, three in 400 meters and two in long jump.
She also competed in triple jump, an event introduced for women in 1990, which she won in her first try in the 1993 National Open.
Diay was the first and only woman athlete to rule the 100 meters back-top-back in the Asian Games of 1982 in New Delhi and 1986 in Seoul. She, too, won a are golden sprint double at the Asian Amateur Athletic Association (4 As) championships in 1983 in Singapore and 1987 in Jakarta, the city where she scored a hat trick by ruling the 100 meters, 200 meters and long jump in the 14th SEA Games.
Her first unforgettable moment came in 1981 when the country first hosted the SEA Games. She led a bunch of gritty products of the then two-year-old Project: Gintong Alay initiated and headed by President Ferdinand Marcos’s nephew Michael Keon, now the mayor of Laoag City.
Diay topped the 200 and 400 meters to highlight the Philippines’ 55-55-77 gold-silver-bronze harvest for a third place finish overall behind perennial general champion Indonesia and Thailand.
She was aptly rewarded for her heroic as no less than President Marcos handed her the gold medal besides earning a hug, too, during the podium ceremony.
Barely a year after that, the Bulakenia lass—she with a pretty face, statuesque 5-foot-7 figure and pony-tailed hair that dangled whenever and wherever she ran, imitated but unmatched by her rivals, both local and foreign—took the first of her quest to becoming the continent’s fastest female runner by claiming the gold in the century dash of the Asian Games in New Delhi.
She repeated the feat four years later in Seoul where she formally crowned herself Asia’s Sprint Queen, thus, becoming the first and only female sprinter to win the honor back-to-back.
And as they say—the rest is history.
Image credits: Eddie Alinea files