Team Philippines gymnastics bets Emma Malabuyo, Aleah Finnegan and Levi Jung-Ruivivar. They are set to compete in the Paris Olympics 2024 women’s gymnastics event. –Levi Jung-Ruivivar Instagram
The trio of Aleah Finnegan, Emma Malabuyo and Levi Jung-Ruivivar will end Sunday the Philippines’ 60-year wait for a female gymnast to compete in the Summer Olympics.
Finnegan, Malabuyo and Jung-Ruivivar, are slated to take part in the women’s qualification, subdivision 3 at the Paris Games, marking the first time female Filipino gymnasts will take the Olympic floor since Evelyn Magluyan and Maria-Luisa Floro participated in the 1964 Tokyo edition.
Available information online shows Magluyan, then 20 years old, placing 82nd in the floor exercise with 15.132 points, and 83rd in balance beam (14.332) and individual all-around (29.464).
Floro didn’t register any points in all events held at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, and there’s very little information on how her stint turned out.
Another one, or two, would have been a part of this short list, but issues surrounding the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines (GAP) prevented the Philippines from sending a representative in the 1988 Seoul Games.
Lucero’s chance
Older generations know who Bea Lucero is. She achieved success as a gymnast at a young age, earning victories, medals and those famous Milo commercials.
Fifteen at the time, Lucero seemed like a cinch to make it to the Summer Games in the South Korean capital, especially after producing three golds and two silvers at the 1987 Jakarta Southeast Asian (SEA) Games.
But leadership squabbles affecting GAP months before the Olympics, according to news accounts, denied Lucero that chance. Joanne Chan, another gymnast, was also seen as a possible Olympic qualifier.
Lucero, who made waves by becoming the first Filipino athlete to win SEA Games golds in two different sports, did go to Seoul for the Olympics, albeit as part of the Philippine broadcast team for PTV-4.
She eventually took part in the Barcelona Olympics four years later, not as a gymnast but a taekwondo jin. Lucero claimed a bronze medal in the women’s featherweight division.
Her medal win, along with fellow jin Stephen Fernandez, in men’s bantamweight did not count in the Philippines’ tally as taekwondo was then a demonstration sport.
This year’s Olympics equals the biggest gymnastics entry the Philippines sent in its history, with Finnegan, Malabuyo and Jung-Ruivivar joining multi-time world champion Carlos Yulo.
Aside from Magluyan and Floro, the Philippines had Demetrio Pastrana and Fortunato Payao in the men’s side of the 1964 Tokyo Games.
Ernesto Beren and Norman Henson represented the country in the 1968 Mexico edition, before Yulo ended the long drought with his Olympic debut three years ago at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games.