Not your typical role model

PALEMBANG, INDONESIA— Every Sunday, while her mother cooked and sold fried tempura near a church in Lahug, Cebu City, Margielyn Didal would collect a few pesos of her own by selling newspapers and guiding cars to parking spaces.

“When I’d run low on tempura to sell, I’d tell her to run to the grocery to buy flour and cooking oil,” her mother, Julie, said in Cebuano in an interview with Cebu Daily News. “After a while, I’d wonder what was taking her so long to come back. I would already run out of tempura to sell.”

Turns out, Didal would be at a nearby skate park, renting skateboards with whatever loose change was in her pocket and practicing her moves.

Margielyn was 12 years old at that time.

She is now 19.

Margielyn Arda Didal of the Philippines celebrates after winning gold in the women’s skateboard street final during the 2018 Asian Games in Palembang on August 29, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / Mohd RASFAN

Chased around the streets of Cebu by cops for practising her passion, Didal would often get scolded and spanked by her father, Lito, for skipping school to ride her board.

“We didn’t like her to skateboard because it’s dangerous,” said Lito in the live interview aired on CDN’s Facebook page via correspondent Chris Ligan. “I told her to stick to school. But she’d leave for school in uniform and when she’d come back home, she’d be wearing her skateboard outfit. She would sometimes sneak out of our house just to practice.”

She may not be your typical role model. But Didal is the country’s latest Asian Games heroine, a gold medal around her neck and P6 million in her pocket.

The daughter of a carpenter and a street food vendor reaped the fruits of all her hard work—and teenage stubbornness—by bagging gold in the women’s street skate event Wednesday afternoon at sprawling Jakabaring Sports Complex here by performing tricks with the same reckless abandon that used to drive her mother to her knees.

“In the end, we would just pray to God to keep her safe, far from harm. No matter what we, her parents, would say, she’d always follow her passion,” said Julie.

Margielyn thus became the fourth gold medalist for the Philippines in this 45-nation Olympics of the region, and with it comes a P6-million windfall from the government and the private sector, which she will use to give her family a better life and acquire passports for her parents so that they can join her the next time she competes abroad.

“I just want to show everyone that skateboarding is a serious sport, and that it can be fun as well,” said Didal in Filipino after totaling 30.4 points to dominate the field, with Japan’s Isa Kaya placing a distant second with 25 and 12-year-old Indonesian Nyimas Bunga tallying 19.8 for the bronze medal.

Girl power is what has saved this Philippine campaign here, with weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz performing to expectations for the 53-kilogram snatch and clean and jerk events gold and the young troika of golfers led by Yuka Saso sweeping the individual and team championships last Sunday.

That fourth gold not only extended the country’s improvement of its past performance in Incheon, South Korea, in 2014, but it also matched the haul during the 2006 edition in Doha Qatar where the bulk of the contribution came from two boxers, wushu and billiards.

“My joy is overflowing, especially for my fellow skateboarders,” said Didal, a veteran of the prestigious Street League Championship held in London last May, where she was the first Southeast Asian competitor invited to the prestigious tournament.

Didal used to be a literal street kid, hooked to skateboarding because her mom sells “kwek-kwek” and tempura near the Concave Skate Park in Lahug.

While Julie said she’ll never give up selling street food because “it’s the business that helped me send my kids to school,” Margielyn will give most—if not all—of her winnings to her parents to improve their stall and maybe even “start a small business.”

Didal performed with dogged determination and led from start to finish, opening up with a “board slide” trick on the rails to garner 6.7 points before performing an “Ollie” for 14.4 points. Isa tallied 13.3 before the tricks side of the event came about.

Skaters are given five tries in the tricks, with the top two scores to count, and Didal totally annihilated the opposition in her third and fourth attempts with scores of 7.1 and 8.9 highlighted by backside 50/50 with a 360-degree flip-out that whipped the crowd into a frenzy.

“This was the first time that Margielyn tried that stunt and is the highest score garnered by any skateboarder so far in the street event,” said Skateboard Association of the Philippines Inc. president Monty Mendigoria.