WHO said we didn’t do well in Jakarta?
We finished 19th overall among 45 nations and that was bad?
Finishing two rungs better than in 2014 Incheon was not an improvement?
We won four gold medals and that’s not something to crow about?
Wasn’t that a quadruple in victories recorded as we won only one gold medal in 2014 Incheon?
Listen to our winners in the just-ended Asiad.
“We played for the country and to win for the country is the ultimate satisfaction,” said Yuka Saso, women’s golf champion via a dramatic come-from-behind victory.
What a moving victory statement.
Her brilliant, last-day, six-under-par 66, decorated by an eagle on her 72nd and final hole, carried the Philippine women’s team to another gold in team play in the company of Bianca Pagdanganan and LK Go.
And Yuka, a Fil-Japanese from San Ildefonso, Bulacan, is only 17. Imagine her vast potential. She might yet proceed to represent the country in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where only individual golf competitions in men and women divisions are calendared.
Like Yuka, Margielyn Didal is also still a teenager.
For her stunning win in the women’s street skateboard, Didal, 19, became the first Filipino to prevail in the inaugural Asiad presentation of the sport shunned mostly by parents, naturally, for the game’s sheer risky qualities.
“With my victory, I believe the cops in Cebu would stop chasing me when they see me again skateboarding in parks and public roads in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics,” said Didal in Cebuano.
That could only mean she wasn’t that thoroughly prepared for the Jakarta Asiad, her training repeatedly interrupted by Cebu’s arrest-happy police.
But with her win in Jakarta, that should be history now. And if Didal’s parents would now be the first to shoo away sneaky cops out of Didal’s sight, they’d be justified.
You see, Didal’s father-carpenter and sidewalk-vendor mother would now be the very firsts to encourage their child from pursuing her Olympic dream, given that their daughter’s win worth at least P6 million had instantly plucked them out of the clutches of unspeakable poverty. Margielyn alone dug deep into her pockets for coins to rent her skateboard during training.
And Diaz?
“Now that I won in the Asian Games, the gold medal can also be won in the Olympics,” she said, conviction written on her face, as her Asiad victory was a sensational follow-up to her silver finish in the 2014 Rio Olympics.
Like Didal, Diaz also followed a tortuous route in her journey to the top, having to overcome a hunger-laden life as her father is a mere tricycle driver trying his best to make both ends meet.
With Hidilyn’s silver in 2014 Rio that became the country’s third Olympic silver after boxers Anthony Villanueva in the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad and Onyok Velasco in the 1996 Atlanta Games, their life was dramatically transformed from poor-dirt to upper-class comfort following a windfall of cash bonuses coming her way.
So vastly improved was their station in life after Rio that Diaz could spare a virtual fortune to build a weightlifting gym dedicated to train aspiring future Hidilyns—for free.
If only for that, Hidilyn Diaz’s resolve to give back had upped her heroic stature all the more in the truest spirit of life’s saga and drama—if not surpassed altogether our fifth-place itself in Jakarta.
As the cliché goes, may her tribe increase.
THAT’S IT Will Coach Yeng Guiao choose Greg Slaughter over Christian Standhardinger as Gilas’s naturalized player in the Fiba Cup windows against Iran and Qatar this month to replace the suspended Andray Blatche? Because Slaughter stands almost 7-foot-1, he could be easily favored over the 6-foot-8 Standhardinger. But should speed, agility and creativity come into play, the Fil-German Standhardinger might be it. Indeed, Guiao is now saddled with a most crucial move in his coaching career. Let’s pray he makes the right move.