Standing on one corner of the 12-meter by 12-meter mat, gymnast Ma. Cristina Onofre stares intently across the floor before breaking out into a full gallop for her dismount.
Nearly halfway into her diagonal run, the 21-year-old captain of the national women’s artistic gymnastics team goes into a twisting cartwheel, after which she executes a back somersault, and into a double back somersault to end her routine.
She wobbles slightly upon landing, taking a half step back to regain her balance and composure, before raising both arms with fingers splayed out, and punctuated with a broad smile, as gymnasts are wont to do.
It’s not quite yet a gold medal-winning performance, but Onofre believes she and the team have what it takes to challenge gymnastics powerhouses Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam for coveted positions on the winners’ podium in the Southeast Asian Games.
“We’re improving everyday, and we know we can do it,” says the Games veteran. “We know we have the skills to win. All we need is more international exposure to improve, gain more experience and strengthen our confidence.”
Like many other amateur sports in the country, the potential of the women’s gymnastics team is capped by limited funding—money that is necessary if the young athletes are to hone their skills on the balance beam, uneven bars, vault and floor exercise in overseas training camps, supervised by international coaches, and to compete at the highest levels in regional competitions.
“I can’t emphasize enough how important international exposure is to winning championships, whether in the SEA Games or in other competitions,” says Jasmin Valenton-Ortega, the head coach of the national women’s artistic gymnastics team. “When you train and compete abroad, you get to see and experience how the best gymnasts and coaches do it. And you take those lessons back to your training here at home, and onto your next competition.”
Ortega knows from whence she speaks. She won several medals, including two golds, during the SEA Games in Manila in 1991 and in Singapore in 1993—the heyday of Philippine gymnastics. As part of her preparations back then, she participated in several Asian gymnastics meets and even flew to the United States to attend a training camp administered by Bela and Marta Karolyi, the former being the coach of Romanian Olympic champion Nadia Comaneci.
Since 1997, no “WAG” (that stands for women’s artistic gymnastics) athlete has won a gold in the 10-nation biennial sports meet.
Despite the two-decade gold-medal drought, Onofre says the general sentiment is that the team’s slump has ended and its fortunes are on the rise.
It is a well-founded sentiment. During the 2015 Singapore SEA Games, the women’s team returned to the podium after a long absence, taking the bronze medal behind champion Malaysia and runner-up Singapore. The Filipino female gymnasts beat the heralded Vietnamese team, which counted in its roster Phan Thi Hà Thanh, a former World Cup champion.
Going forward, Gymnastics Association of the Philippines secretary general Bettina Pou is optimistic about her gymnasts’ chances, but cautiously so. “We expect to do better than the last SEA Games,” she says, pointing to the team’s bronze-medal finish, plus a silver for the Filipino-American Ava Verdeflor on the uneven bars.
This August in Kuala Lumpur, the team hopes to move one step higher on the medal podium with a silver, plus possibly a gold medal in one of the four apparatus events.
“We can also win a silver on the vault and the floor exercise,” Pou says, adding that if rookie Kaitlin de Guzman can execute a good routine in the uneven bars, this could lead to another silver medal or, at least, a bronze.
To make this a reality, Pou says her team needs funds for at least one more foreign trip, possibly to attend training camp in Japan this July in the run-up to the SEA Games the following month. “We need more exposure in international competitions and a stint with a foreign expert on uneven bars,” she says.
On the rainy Friday night at the gym in one corner of the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex in Manila, WAG team captain Onofre, De Guzman, Katrina Marie Evangelista and Mariana Hermoso are panting heavily and sweating profusely. It’s a cool 27 degrees Celsius outside, but a hot 34 degrees inside the warehouse-type structure ventilated by large evaporator fans, blowing humid air.
Russian gymnastics experts visited the venue recently and pointed out that the training environment was too hot to get any quality training done. In fact, they concluded it was bordering on “unsafe” since temperatures rise above the recommended 25 degrees every day, especially during summer. The heat makes the gymnasts more prone to injuries. And almost everywhere else, national teams train in air-conditioned, or at least cooler, facilities.
“There are days we can’t train on the uneven bars since they become too hot because of the friction,” says the 16-year-old Evangelista, who will be wearing the country’s colors in the SEA Games for the first time this year. “[Getting] blisters is normal, but sometimes we get burns on our hands when it’s really hot. It’s all part of the sacrifice.”
And sacrifice is something these young girls know well, being at the gym six days a week, including Friday evenings when most people their age are out partying with friends.
“Being an athlete is a big sacrifice, especially in terms of time,” says 16-year-old Mariana Hermoso, who will also be competing in her first SEA Games. “We have to give up time with friends, often meals with family and even sacrifice our grades, because sometimes you’re too tired to study when you get home late at night after training.”
“But we sacrifice because we love the sport,” she adds. “With just a little more help, we know we can bring honor to the country.”