Aiming for another gold

It hasn’t been a smooth run-up to the Hanoi SEA Games for -61kg kumite specialist Jamie Lim who suffered fractures in both hands last March, missing the World Karate Federation premier league in Portugal the next month. First, it was a crack in her right hand then, Lim went down with a complete fracture of her left middle finger. She was injured in sparring during the national team’s bubble camp in Baguio and left camp for treatment in Manila.

Lim said she continued to train at home, focusing on kicks while keeping her hands free. Now, she’s back in top form and ready to bag her second SEA Games gold medal. In 2019, Lim topped the +61kg division but has since dropped down to -61. “I had different challenges for 2019 and this year’s SEA Games,” she related. “In 2019, I had stopped (competing) for four years so I had to catch up to get back in shape in five months. This time, I had two fractures, one in each hand and it happened so close to the SEA Games. But we had more time to prepare (for Hanoi) and of course, I carry with me all the experiences from 2019 to now.”

Lim said shifting to a new weight class puts her in an unfamiliar position. “The Southeast Asian Championships were held in March and I wasn’t able to join because of my injuries,” she said. “The finalists in my category were from Vietnam and Malaysia. I’ve never played against them before because I used to be in +61 and now, I’m in -61. In the last Asian Championships, they were all in a different pool from mine.”

It was at the Asian Championships in Kazakhstan last December when Lim and Fil-Japanese teammate Junna Tsukii made waves by claiming silvers. Lim and Tsukii were the only karate gold medalists from the Philippines at the 2019 SEA Games. “Junna is doing well and she’s been to many competitions this year, is ranked No. 4 in the world and is feeling good,” said Lim who celebrates her 25th birthday today. “Mae (Soriano) has also been training well and consistently. This camp for the SEA Games started in September last year so we have great efforts for Hanoi.”

Lim, a UP summa cum laude math major, said the return of the open-weight team kumite events for men and women is an exciting development. For men, the team event will involve five fighters and for women, three. A team will list its fighters from 1 to 5 for men and 1 to 3 for women and they’ll be matched against competitors from an opposing team similarly numbered. It’s possible that a fighter may outweigh an opponent depending on the order of battle, making every confrontation unpredictable and strategic. The team competition was struck out in the 2019 calendar but will be back this year.