Desaparecidos

Be patient. I am going to write about sports champions who may have been forgotten after instantly soaring to prominence but plummeted as fast like a shooting star. Here today, gone tomorrow.

In the 2004 Olympics, Yulia Nestsiarenka won the centerpiece 100meter dash final out of nowhere, becoming the first non-black champion since the 1980 Games. But fans were more confused than stunned. Who is she? No one saw her coming. After she won, no one seemed to celebrate her triumph, except of course her countrymen in Belarus. A queen without a following, she disappeared faster than she sped past a weaker batch of finalists.

Others disappeared by choice. Fil-Am sprinter Trenten Anthony Beram became the toast of Philippine athletics campaign in the 2017 SEA Games where he won a rare 400-200 sprint double. He was expected to defend both crowns on home soil last year but never showed up, didn’t even express his intention to run to begin with.

At a young age of 24, Beram is reported to have retired before he even peaked to excel in the continental level. But at least he rewrote the 200m indoor and outdoor Philippine records and is the first and only Filipino to breach the 21second barrier in 200m.

In tennis majors, the French Open is home to one-time winners especially in the distaff side. In the 2017 women’s singles final, unseeded Jelena Ostapenko upset heavily favored Simona Halep and became the first Latvian to win a slam, only to lose in the first round two years in a row.

There were many others before her, most notable were perennial slam quarterfinalist Anastasia Myskina who became the first Russian woman to win a singles major in 2004, and Croatian Iva Majoli who spoiled the calendar slam campaign of then world number one Martina Hingis in 1997. Both vanished in thin air.

Except for Ostapenko who is still active, these one-slam wonders never reprised their shock win until they retired. But it’s not a fluke either. It’s the grand slam where everyone is a threat. But Anna Kournikova, who is famous more for the way she looked than the way she played, is not unfamiliar. Hers is a different story. In the podium she wasn’t missing, for in singles she won nothing. Tennis lost her to endorsements where she made the killing. Who needs a trophy when you have all the money?

Indeed, these athletes have no right to complain. It could be worse, others retired empty-handed and weren’t even close, not even a runner-up plate or a bronze medal to remember them by. Be grateful then. Learn to see situations with a silver lining, even if what you so wanted is gold, and the one who said it is gray.

At least they were still found somewhere else, retired or still playing but not winning, while a disturbing number who disappeared in the dead of the night for saying or doing something critical are nowhere to be found, dead or alive.