As the late great Yogi Berra would have uttered, it was deja vu all over again Tuesday. That’s when Zamboanga City’s Hidilyn Diaz delivered the country’s first gold medal in the 18th edition of the Asian Games in Indonesia.
Easily one of the tiniest in our 273-athlete delegation to Jakarta and Palembang, the 27-year-old Diaz scored a gigantic feat with a victory in the 53-kilogram division of weightlifting’s snatch and clean and jerk events.
Her total lift of 207 kg bested the efforts of Turkmenistan’s Kristina Shermetova (206 kg) and Thailand’s Surodchana Khambao (201 kg).
Almost about the same day in August two years ago, the low-key Zamboangeña also gave us no inkling of a monumental achievement ahead.
As we gathered around television sets and watched inattentively while she competed in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, little did we expect that we’d be proudly sitting in front row seats to history.
Competing in the same women’s 53 kg, Diaz bagged the silver medal and broke our country’s 20-year medal drought in the Summer Olympiad.
Gold wasn’t hanging from her neck when she came home to a heroine’s homecoming from Rio.
But Ms Diaz’s silver was easily treated as gold by a waiting nation whose dream for a metal of such hue remains unfulfilled, and whose last Olympic medal, also a silver, was delivered by boxer Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco in the 1996 Atlanta Games.
With her victory in the continent’s version of Olympics, Hidilyn is looking forward to the Tokyo Summer Games in 2020.
Hopefully, her gold in Jakarta that followed her silver and and bronze medals at the International Weightlifting Federation championships in California last year won’t be the last for the Filipino contingent.
In the 2014 Asian Games in Inchon, South Korea, our meager yield of a lone gold, three silvers and 11 bronzes lodged us in 22nd place out of 37 countries.
Prior to Diaz’s gold Tuesday, Filipino athletes have won four bronze medals—two in pomsae and one each in wushu and taekwondo.
At press time, Chinese athletes, led by Liu Xiang, who booked a new world record in women’s 50-meter backstroke on Tuesday, continued their juggernaut at the Games.
The mighty Chinese lead the medal tally with 60 medals, including 30 golds. Japan is second with 47, of which 12 are gold, and Korea is in third with 34, including eight golds.
Host Indonesia is in fourth place with 12 medals, including five golds.
Clocking 26.98 seconds, Ms Liu broke the previous world record of 27.06 seconds made by compatriot Zhao Jing at the 2009 World Championships in Rome.