MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines’ showing in the Paris Olympics will go down in history as the country’s best performance in the quadrennial sports spectacle.
With Carlos Yulo delivering a golden double after winning the floor exercise and vault in men’s artistic gymnastics, plus Nesthy Petecio and Aira Villegas already guaranteed of medals in women’s boxing, the initial goal of surpassing the one gold, two silvers, and one bronze collected in the Tokyo Olympics has already been accomplished.
The next goal post for the Philippines would be to exceed the total number of medals the country brought home from Tokyo. The question is, with less than a week left in the competition, who else can deliver a medal of any color among those yet to see action from the Philippine contingent?
Twenty-two athletes, 15 females and 7 males, competing in nine sports bannered the Philippine flag in the Paris Games, the country’s biggest delegation since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when the Philippines sent 26 athletes in nine sports.
As the Games hit the final stretch, only five Filipinos have yet to see action.
Bianca Pagdanganan and Dottie Ardina will tee off the country’s campaign in women’s golf on Wednesday, August 7, at 4 pm Philippine time.
The Olympic field features 60 players each for the men’s and women’s events. The official world golf rankings determined the list of participants in the competition, with a limit of four players from each country.
With the restriction, this enabled Pagdanganan, 125th in the world, and Ardina, 260th in the world, to become eligible for the Paris Games.
Pagdanganan will make her second straight Olympic appearance. She finished 43rd in the Tokyo Olympics.
Expecting medals from the two Filipina golfers will be as difficult a challenge as making a hole-in-one.
Nine out of the top ten golfers in the world will be hitting the fairways of the Le Golf National in Guyancourt, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, including world No. 1 Nelly Korda and world No. 10 and recent US Open champion Yuka Saso of Japan. Saso represented the Philippines in the Tokyo Olympics.
The bigger chances for a medal or two rest on the broad shoulders of a trio of Philippine weightlifters who were the last to arrive in Paris after completing grueling training camps in Saarbrücken, Germany and Metz, France.
Also on Wednesday at 9 pm, John Ceniza will begin his Olympic quest to continue the legacy of two-time Olympic medalist Hidylin Diaz.
Defending 61kg Olympic gold medalist Li Fabin appears untouchable in Ceniza’s weight category. Li, also a three-time world champion and a four-time Asian champion, holds the world record lift of 318kg.
American Hampton Morris, the 20-year-old who was second to Li in qualifying for the Paris Olympics, has a personal best of 303kg.
Former Youth World Weightlifting champion Sergio Massidda of Italy, tabbed by Sports Illustrated as a probable silver medal winner in Paris, lifted 302kg in qualifying for the Olympics.
Ceniza, fifth in the rankings, is just behind 35-year-old Indonesian legend Eko Yuli Irawan, who has already won Olympic medals – two silvers and two bronzes.
The 26-year-old Cebuano has a personal best of 300kg, which puts him in striking distance of Morris and Massidda.
Another Cebu native will be in the spotlight on Thursday, August 8, at 9 pm. Elreen Ando, who also qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in the 64kg category, went down in weight to 59kg for the Paris Games.
Ando, however, will be up against some formidable opposition.
Ranked seventh in the field with a personal best lift of 228kg, she has a lot of ground to cover as world No. 1 and reigning world and Asian champion Luo Shifang of China boasts a record of 248kg.
Next to the Chinese as medal contenders are three-time European champion Kamila Konotop of Ukraine and Tokyo Olympic gold medalist Maude Charron of Canada, who both have lifted 236kg.
The youngest among the weightlifters will be the last Philippine athlete to compete when the women’s 71kg begins on Friday, August 9, at 1:30 am.
The 20-year-old Vanessa Sarno represents the future of Philippine weightlifting, but she could put herself in a position to be a force in the present.
The Bohol native, who clinched gold in the 2020 Asian Championship in Tashkent, Uzbekistan when she was just 16 years old, is ranked fourth behind 21-year-old sensation Olivia Lynn Reeves of the United States, world championships silver and bronze medalist Angie Paola Palacios of Ecuador, and two-time world champion and six-time European champion Loredana Elena Toma of Romania.
Sarno’s best lift of 249kg, however, is seven kilos off Toma’s mark of 256 kg, so the young Filipina will need to have something up her sleeves to narrow the gap between her and the top three in her category.
Ceniza and Sarno will be the country’s brightest prospects for a fifth medal, but it will entail a lot of effort and a bit of luck since they will need a lot of catching up against the projected podium finishers in their respective weight categories.
Diaz and her team showed in the Tokyo Olympics that a good strategy will also be crucial in the quest for more Olympic hardware.
The collective hope of Filipinos who have tuned in to support all our athletes from Day 1 is that we can end the Paris Olympics on a high note by adding one or two more to our medal haul. – Rappler.com