Girl power

CEBU, Philippines — The country’s best Asian Games finish in this millennia was twelve years ago, at the 2006 Asiad at Doha, Qatar.  Our athletes that time had a different battle cry as “Laban Pilipinas!” and the overworked and overhyped “Puso” are yet being ovulated.  We had 19 medals – 4 golds, 6 silvers and 9 bronzes, good for an 18th place among 45 participating nations.   

Almost always, PH medals come from individual events, the bulk from combat sports.    A young Eduard Folayang was on the 2006 wushu team and finished with a silver medal.  Aside from wushu, boxing, karate and taekwondo produced.  The only non-contact sport in this edition that won medals was in billiards with one gold and two silvers.

Prior to 2006, in a field of 27 nations, we had a 6th place finish during the 1986 Seoul Asiad with a 4-gold, 5-silver, 9-bronze medal haul.  For political reasons, 10 Asian nations boycotted the 1986 Games.

Fast forward to the present and we had already equalled our 2006 gold harvest.  As of this writing, a fifth gold is a possibility as judoka Kiyomi Watanabe will be grappling with a Japanese athlete in the 63kg gold medal match.

Three of our boxers are in the semis and will face different opponents later in the afternoon today and their victory will send them to the finals.  Light flyweight Carlo Paalam, flyweight Rogen Ladon and middleweight Eumir Felix Marcial will be going for gold.

Our gold medal winners are all girls and that would justify the point of view that what men can do, women can also do, even better.  Males are always considered the alpha dog with women there only for supporting roles but recent events show otherwise.  Not only in sports but in other major fields where women are empowered and oh, yes, husbands had long known this that they willingly or grudgingly (whatever the case) succumb to being de-powered.

Behind the golden success of Hidilyn Diaz, four other successful women followed the plentiful path of P6 million – Yuka Saso, Bianca Pagdanganan, Lois Kaye Go and Margielyn Didal.  There is always pain and sacrifice in training but from all the hurt, we have all seen the beauty of the results. 

They had overcome obstacles thru sheer determination and faith in their abilities and in the cases of Diaz and Didal who come from very humble beginnings, NSA infighting and dangerous on-road practice runs respectively.  They followed their passions and succeeded.

I’m not just singling out the golden harvesters but also the other female medallists and competitors.  Others might have failed a podium finish but they had done what majority of the male specie cannot do.  They were determined to compete where others can never even contend.

Time and time again we flunk in a team sport that doesn’t reciprocate the rabid affection we show to it.  Yet, again and again our sports officials blindly put in ridiculous amounts of money to basketball where winning the lotto jackpot has a slightly better odds than reign supreme in Asian hoops.  I could get some negative reactions on this but dammit, let’s get real.  We could be the 2018 Asian Games basketball glamor team but still, losing sucks big time.

Basketball and volleyball is a game for giants and we are a race not known for stratospheric heights.  We do have exceptionally tall natives but they don’t have the moves.  Our women’s volleyball game against China was an example of height is might.  The classic domination was aggression of West Philippine Sea proportions.

Why can’t our officials put into their calloused heads that it would be wise to invest in individual and prospective medal-winning sports.  We can only imagine the medals we could have won in individual events had there been millions budgeted on these instead.  But even the sports associations are infected with an incurable viral strain commonly known as politics that personal gains take precedence over the welfare of our athletes.  Nothing new here.

Our women athletes stood tall and proud, and no matter the results, like a diamond they can’t be broken.  To quote Nobel Prize winner in Literature and British novelist/playwright William Golding, “I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men.  They are by far superior and always have been.”