Eric Shauwn Cray of the Philippines reacts after winning the men’s 100m final athletics event during the 28th Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in Singapore on June 9, 2015. AFP PHOTO / MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP PHOTO / MANAN VATSYAYANA
RIO DE JANEIRO—The country’s track and field Olympians finally get off the starting blocks starting Sunday with Mary Joy Tabal doing the honors as she races in the women’s marathon at the 31st Summer Games here.
Traditionally the Olympics’ centerpiece competition, athletics actually got going Friday with the finals in the first three events at the 74,738-capacity Maracana Stadium, also the venue of Rio 2016’s opening and closing ceremonies.
Tabal, long jumper Marestella Torres-Sunang and Filipino-American hurdler Eric Shauwn Cray are the country’s three athletics Olympians, the most by any competing Philippine NSAs (national sports associations) here.
The three-time Olympian Sunang vies in her event’s qualifying round on Aug. 17 with the finals scheduled in the evening, while Cray plunges into action in the heats of the 400-meter hurdles the following morning.
“All three made it to the Olympics on their own merits; they all beat the Rio qualifying requirement,” national athletics chief Philip Ella Juico told the Inquirer in a text message.
“We are already proud that athletics has the most number of Olympians in the Philippine team.”
The oldest in the team at 35, Sunang is gunning to slay the ghost of her below-par performances in Beijing 2008 and London 2012 where she had more foul attempts combined than legal jumps and fell a whale short of the finals.
Cray said he and his coach, Jamaica’s three-time Olympian Damien Clarke, are targeting a finals stint with a new national record. Cray’s mother is the former Maria Brosas from Olongapo.
Though running in her third 42-kilometer race of the year, and barely two months after her second—a fitness red-flag to marathoners—,Tabal swears she has the strength and motivation to perform well in this Olympics.
“My aim is to break my personal best while racing against the Kenyans and Ethiopians,” said Tabal. “I will and I must. This (running in the Olympics) is an opportunity of a lifetime.”