By Al S. Mendoza

 

WE toast Hidilyn Diaz for her historic weightlifting win in Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Her gold was the country’s highest achievement in 97 years since our first Olympics participation in Paris 1924.

Nobody can ever take that adoration away from her.

It is a lifetime badge of honor.  Like a tattoo worthy of veneration.

It has no equal.  Peerless.

After Diaz, we next toast Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam for their  boxing silvers and Eumir Marcial for his boxing bronze.

We toast the quartet as their four-medal haul surpassed the three bronze medals in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics won each by swimmer Teodoro Yldefonso, high jumper Simeon Toribio and boxer Jose Villanueva.

While we toast the gold of Diaz and the silvers of Petecio and Paalam with singular exaltation, equal acclaim goes to the bronze of Marcial.

In the Olympics, all medals glitter like gold.

When Diaz won her first medal after her runner-up finish in Rio 2016, it also ended the country’s 20-year medal drought after boxer Onyok Velasco’s silver finish in Atlanta 1996.

After winning the silver, Diaz thought of retiring, her mind telling her the feat was more than enough to satisfy her Olympics dream.

Look, she was second-to-last in her first Olympics in Beijing 2008.

More devastating was her “DNF” result in her second Olympics in London 2012.  DNF meaning “Did Not Finish.”

One with a faint heart would have easily called it quits—and Diaz would have been justified.

Turns out Diaz was of sterner stuff.  She fought on.

And when Diaz captured her Olympics gold medal on July 26, she became the country’s first double-medal winner in back-to-back fashion since Yldefonso did the trick in Amsterdam 1928 and Los Angeles 1932.

Hidilyn’s P5-million bonus for the silver finish in 2016 produced two business ventures, a house for her parents and a weightlifting gym for youngsters wanting to follow in her footsteps.

But the gold in Tokyo brought her a cash windfall that she never imagined even in her wildest dreams.

As of last counting, more than P50 million is in her bank account.

A house and lot awaits her in her hometown Zamboanga City.

Another vacation house for her in Tagaytay City.

And yet another fully-furnished, two-bedroom high-end condominium unit for her at plush Eastwood in Libis, Q.C., worth P14.4 million.

But more than the singular honor Diaz had brought to the country, we must also make a toast to the success as a whole of the pandemic-postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

For, in the end, COVID-19 was no match to mankind’s resolve to defeat even the greatest of odds.

Not even the deadliest virus in modern history could dampen the human spirit’s fight for lasting triumph.

And, yes, I won’t be surprised if the golden feat of Hidilyn Diaz would spark a sports revolution in the country.

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