PSC chair William Ramirez. Tristan Tamayo/ INQUIRER.net
Surrounding high-performance athletes with various experts in the field of sports science wasn’t a novel idea when the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) began adopting the formula after the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
And since the blueprint proved its worth in the just-concluded Tokyo Games, PSC Chair William Ramirez will make sure that other Olympic-potential athletes get the same efficient support personnel.
“Countries with successful sports programs have been doing it for decades. We succeeded by adopting the same model,’’ said Ramirez, referring to the team of sports specialists that reinforced a number of Olympians such as weightlifting gold medalist Hidilyn Diaz.
Diaz, meanwhile, said she is forever thankful for winning the gold medal in the 55-kilogram division and wants to look back at the journey that started when she placed ninth overall in one of the qualifying meets for Tokyo, the 2018 World Weightlifting Championships in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
“For me, for Team HD, we’ll always look back at the things we went through. They were not easy and we all had doubts when we started this journey,” Diaz said. “But we never gave up.”
The PSC helped fund members of Diaz’ team: Chinese coach Gao Kaiwen, strength and conditioning coach Julius Naranjo, sports nutritionist Jeaneth Aro and psychologist Dr. Karen Trinidad, who all had roles to play in whipping Hidilyn to top shape.
‘I hope to inspire’
Prior to the Tokyo Olympics, the journey of Team HD was featured in a four-part documentary series on the Facebook page of Kick-Start Coffee Brewed Awakening entitled “Let’s Go HD!”
The documentary series allowed the Zamboanga City native to do a video diary that was done in free flowing and heartfelt videos, which showed her struggles, the highs and lows of being an elite athlete, while in a training camp in Malaysia.
“I hope to inspire a lot of Filipino people [with the documentary]. That’s the purpose,” Diaz said.
Ramirez said there’s a plan to maintain the government’s support of the 19 Filipino Olympians who saw action in Tokyo and surround them with top-level foreign coaches, physiologists, psychologists, nutritionists and masseuse, among others, that would help them qualify again to the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Our support for these athletes will be all-out. Aside from them, we will identify athletes from Olympic sports as young as 15 years old who will all get the same backing,’’ said Ramirez. INQ