We waited for so long

By Alex P. Vidal

“My children can really understand the Olympic Games, To have a medal is very, very special.”

—Tim Henman

I AM proud to belong in this generation of sportswriters.

At least I’m still active and alive when the Philippines finally and officially won its first-ever Olympic Games gold medal in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics courtesy of weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz of Zamboanga City.

My being a sportswriter by heart has brought me sentimentally near the podium of the awarding ceremony where the Philippine anthem was loudly played to our grand delight.

What a feeling.

Other great Filipino sportswriters have passed away without knowing what Golden Girl Hidilyn Diaz did during the once-postponed Summer Olympic Games in the time of pandemic.

History was made 97 years since the Filipinos became the first athletes from Southeast Asia to compete in the modern games that romped off in Greece in 1896 several months before Dr. Jose Rizal was executed in Bagumbayan.

My late fellow sports scribes had waited impatiently for so long starting when featherweight boxer Anthony Villanueva nearly won the Philippines’ first gold medal in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; when another boxer, light flyweight Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco Jr., followed suit in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; and when Diaz clinched the silver in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro.

The rest was a spaghetti of bronze medals.

Miracles didn’t happen.

-o0o-

We were all actually ecstatic when the Philippines “won” the first gold medal during the 1988 Seoul Olympics in bowling courtesy of Arianne Cerdeña; but the medal wasn’t counted in the official tally since bowling was then a demonstration event.

It was Cerdeña’s fellow Pinoy Olympian, light flyweight boxer Leopoldo Serrantes, who reaped the honor by bringing home the bronze medal.

Since 1924 when the Philippines first took part in the quadrennial international multi-sport event in Paris, Golden Girl Hidilyn Diaz’s gold medal was elusive.

We couldn’t snatch it in the track and field, taekwondo, archery, swimming and other events where we had world class athletes but with slim chances of winning it, but continued to dream and pursue that slippery gold medal until weightlifting finally nailed it in Tokyo.

Fourteen Philippine presidents from Manuel L. Quezon in 1935 until the time of the late Benigno “Noynoy”Aquino III in 2010 waited in vain for the Olympic gold medal.

Still, no gold medal.

Every four years when the Philippines came home from the greatest sports event in the universe, the gold medal seemed like beyond the reach of the brown athletes— it’s like they had to scale the Alpha Centauri constellation in order to just touch and smell that precious metal awarded to the fastest, the mightiest, and the strongest athlete on earth.

-o0o-

Below are some of the facts about the ancient Olympic Games:

-All athletes competed naked;

-Wrestlers and pankration (a sort of mixed martial art which combined boxing and wrestling) competitors fought covered in oil;

-Corporal punishment awaited those guilty of a false start on the track;

-There were only two rules in the pankration – no biting and no gouging;

-Boxers were urged to avoid attacking the on-display male genitals;

-There were no points, no time limits and no weight classifications in the boxing;

-Athletes in the combat sports had to indicate their surrender by raising; their index fingers – at times they died before they could do this;

-Boxers who could not be separated could opt for klimax, a system whereby one fighter was granted a free hit and then vice-versa – a toss of a coin decided who went first.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)