ANATOMY OF GOLD

The Philippines’ first Olympic gold medal, in a sport that is not popular in the Philippines, did not happen by accident. It was a journey that began three decades ago in Barangay Mampang, Zamboanga City. Here, exceptional talent, visionary leadership, and an audacious grassroots program converged to give Hidilyn Diaz the boost she needed early in her career.

BY ATOM ARAULLO

November 24, 2021

ADDITIONAL INTERVIEWS: VOLTAIRE TUPAZ
RESEARCH: Bong Santisteban and Elyzsa Jenwel Olavydez
VISUALIZATION: Czarina Jollyn Bastasa
ILLUSTRATIONS: Jose Luigi Almuena and Zander Esteban

This story was first published by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
in collaboration with FYT Media

It seems fitting that our enduring image of Tokyo 2020 is that of weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, arms above her shoulders, elbows locked, body taut, lifting the unbearable weight of nearly a century of national disappointment. And then a moment later, bent forward, hands clasped tight against her chest, screaming, realizing she has done it, a nation weeping for joy with her back home.

The battle for gold was down to her last lift. When she stepped up to the stage, the record for the women’s 55 kilogram division had already been broken three times in quick succession. Diaz herself held that record for all of three minutes when she carried 124 kg in the clean and jerk, before her formidable Chinese rival, who had never placed anything other than first in her competition history, broke it again after lifting 126 kg. Now, Diaz had to carry a kilogram more, a weight she had never conquered previously, whether in contest or practice.

Diaz gripped the bar and took position, uttering her competition mantra again. “Chest out. Deadlift. One motion.”

The weight seemed to float from the floor as Diaz racked it onto her shoulders. Visibly at her limit, Diaz summoned all of her strength to stand up from her squat.

“She has the clean, now she needs the jerk,” the TV commentator said.

With a look of absolute determination, Diaz drove the weight overhead and dropped under it, splitting low to the ground. Her entire body quivered. The bar tipped slightly to the left. The earth moved. But Diaz, a veteran of four Olympics, was not going to let this moment slip from her already torn and bleeding fingers.

She pushed her legs together and straightened her body. One one thousand, two one thousand. History.

It was the Philippines’s first gold medal in the prestigious contest in almost 100 years of trying. For the first time in a medal event, the sun and three stars rose above all colors, and the Lupang Hinirang soared in the halls of the Olympics. Diaz, a sergeant at the Philippine Air Force, held back tears as she saluted the flag, her hand wrapped in tape.

“I couldn’t believe it. I did it despite all the pressure, all the expectations, and against very strong rivals,” Diaz said.

As superlatives swirled following Diaz’s win, it was her heartbroken nemesis who paid her the ultimate compliment. “I really respect Diaz as an opponent because she did the best she could, in fact better than that, and that is the ultimate,” silver medalist Liao Quiyun said.

One gold medal from Tokyo would’ve been enough to juice “Pinoy Pride” for weeks to come, but our athletes were not done yet. It was the turn of our scrappy boxers to tantalize, fighting their way to three more podium finishes: a silver each for Nesthy Petecio and Carlo Paalam, and a bronze for Eumir Marcial.

By the end of the games, it was our winningest Olympics yet, surpassing the three bronze medals the Philippines won way back in 1932.

View this graphic in an interactive format: ANATOMY OF GOLD

Philippine sports on the world stage

Since the first modern games in 1896, the Olympics has come to be recognized as the world’s foremost sporting event. More than 200 nations (and recently, a refugee team) participate in the games, with summer and winter editions alternating every two years.

The Philippines has not had much success in these games. The country’s best and most admired athletes repeatedly fell short of the ultimate prize for decades. This was understood and rationalized with a collective shrug. After all, we were competing against the might and resources of wealthier countries. We watched with awe and no small amount of envy as powerhouse nations like the US, UK, China, Germany and Russia cleaned it up year after year. Filipinos were underdogs, so we embraced it, sequestering “puso” or “heart” as our unofficial battle cry.

Not everything is about winning, however. The best-known architect of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, once said: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.” An overemphasis on victory for its own sake may lead to a skewed, even toxic approach to sport.

Even so, any serious athlete will testify that they play to win. The pursuit of excellence is integral to sport, and winning is a validation of the hard work, dedication, and sacrifice required to get better and eventually compete with the best.

View this graphic in an interactive format: ANATOMY OF GOLD

In some ways, the Philippines had a head start. We first joined the Olympics in the 1924 Paris Games, sending David Nepomuceno to compete in the 100-meter and 200-meter dash. This was 24 years ahead of any other Southeast Asian country, with Myanmar joining the Olympics at the post-World War 2 London Games in 1948. By then, the Philippines had already snagged five bronze medals in three consecutive games, with wins in athletics, swimming, and boxing.

It would take another 80 years for the Philippines to win its next five medals: three silvers and two bronzes. In that time, neighbors Thailand and Indonesia had already won multiple golds, while Vietnam and Singapore earned their first gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The Philippines had fallen behind.

Tracking our delegation size over time reveals a similar story. Qualifying for the Olympics is an achievement in itself because athletes have to rank among the best in the world in a series of sanctioned, international events in order to compete.

From a single representative in 1924, the Philippine delegation grew steadily until the 1964 Tokyo Games, where we sent our biggest contingent of 66 athletes. Since then, that number has gone down. The biggest drop happened after the 1972 Games, in part because we haven’t qualified for basketball since, an event with 10 to 12 players to a team. In London 2012, we sent a lean delegation of 11 athletes, our smallest since 1932.

The decline of Philippine sports is even clearer in the Asian Games. The country’s four best performances came in four consecutive competitions from 1954 to 1966. The Philippines finished second behind Japan in the 1958 and 1962 editions. From then on, our medal haul nosedived despite competing in more events. We finished 22nd out of 37 nations in 2014, and improved slightly to 19th in 2018.

View this graphic in an interactive format: ANATOMY OF GOLD

Why do some countries win more medals than others?

Many studies have explored the relationship between key national characteristics and Olympic success. Two of the most frequently cited factors are population and wealth. The logic behind this is intuitive. A larger population means a larger pool from which to recruit and develop talent. Meanwhile, athletes from richer countries would likely have the advantage of better facilities and equipment, while a higher standard of living improves general fitness and opportunities to participate in sport.

To get a glimpse of these connections, we examined the results of the recent Tokyo Olympics and ranked countries in terms of total medals won.

View this graphic in an interactive format: ANATOMY OF GOLD

Right off the bat, it was clear that considering population alone did not work as a predictor of Olympic success. If population were the only feature that mattered, China, India, US, Indonesia and Pakistan would have been in the top five of the Games, while the Philippines would rank 13th. Only China and US were in the top five, the Philippines ranked 47th-59th, and Pakistan did not even win a single medal.

Plotting the medal tally against GDP per capita with bubbles indicating population size was a little more useful. We considered the top 30 countries in our analysis, and also included Asean nations to zoom in on the performance of the region.

Here, we can see that the higher the GDP per capita of a country, the more medals they won. Even so, there were many exceptions. Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway have been winning less medals compared with nations with comparable per capita incomes (although it’s worth noting that Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway consistently ranked among the top 10 at the Winter Olympics). Among Asean nations, a conspicuous outlier is Singapore, which has one of the lowest medal tallies of countries in the higher GDP per capita range.

Considering population size, some of these deviations can be partially explained. Singapore only has a population of approximately 5.8 million people. This is well below the median of the top 20 countries in the Olympics, about 49 million. Similarly, Switzerland (8.7 million) Denmark (6.8 million), Sweden (10.1 million), and Norway (5.4 million) all have comparatively smaller populations.

Still, this is clearly not the entire picture. With only a slightly bigger population, Cuba, a nation of 11.3 million people, won two more total medals and four more golds than Switzerland, despite having a GDP per capita one tenth the size. Wealth and population alone also cannot account for the outsized performance of countries like China, Russia, and Ukraine. Kenya, which specializes in middle- to long-distance running, is a particular overachiever at the Summer Games. It managed to win four gold medals, four silvers, and two bronzes in Tokyo 2020 despite having a GDP per capita and population that were both about half of the Philippines’.

In their 2015 book “Successful Elite Sport Policies,” authors Veerle De Bosscher, Simon Shibil, and Hans Westerbeek revealed that the three most significant macro-level factors for predicting Olympics success were wealth, population, and a third determinant – current or former communism – that is to say, the presence or earlier presence of a socialist regime. Using regression analysis, a form of predictive modelling that finds the causal relationship between variables, they found that just those three factors predicted medal-winning success by 41.6 percent. Older studies placed the influence slightly higher, hovering at about 50 percent.

These results are encouraging for countries like the Philippines with plenty of ambition. We may have the relative advantage of population, but we are lagging in terms of wealth, and that may take a longer time to change. But when it comes to elite sports, studies suggest that literally half the battle involves other factors. Those other factors are the subject of numerous inquiries, too, with population grip strength, and radios per capita among some of the more intriguing predictors that have been investigated.

But the most self-evident of the factors that may contribute to international sporting success is an effective national sports program. And that begins at the grassroots.

Diaz’s story is proof.

Hidilyn Diaz of the Philippines celebrates after a lift at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido 

Sports at the grassroots

Our first Olympic gold medal, in a sport that is not popular in the Philippines, did not happen by accident. It was a journey that began 30 years ago in Barangay Mampang, Zamboanga City. Here, exceptional talent, visionary leadership, and an audacious grassroots program converged to give Diaz the boost she needed early in her career.

By now, Diaz’s modest beginnings as a young athlete from the province is legendary. The fifth of six children of a tricycle driver turned farmer and a stay-at-home mother, Hidilyn and her siblings grew up with very little. Nevertheless, sports was always part of their life. Hidilyn first learned about weightlifting from her older cousins, her competitive streak revealing itself from an early age.

“My cousins always beat me in other sports. I wasn’t good at them. I liked weightlifting because I was better at it,” Diaz said.

Hidilyn’s budding interest in the sport came at an opportune time. Former national weightlifting athlete Elbert Atilano had just become the director of the Institute of Human Kinetics at the Universidad de Zamboanga (UZ), then called the Zamboanga A.E. Colleges, a non-sectarian private school. He had high ambitions for the sport in his hometown, shifting to coaching full-time almost two decades earlier after realizing the need to upgrade the skills and knowledge of local coaches.

With Atilano as head weightlifting coach, the school dominated national competitions for several years, even beating the powerhouse team of the Armed Forces consistently. The school’s former president Dr. Arturo Eustaquio, Atilano’s boss, jokingly said that he was growing sick of all the national championship titles.

“He (Eustaquio) told us he wanted an international title. He wanted an Olympic gold,” Atilano recalled, laughing. “I told him, ‘If that’s what you want, you should send me abroad to train.’ There were no weightlifting coaches in the Philippines then.”

Eustaquio called his bluff. Soon, Atilano was in Indonesia for an intensive, three-month program under the Asian Sports Institute that cost P300,000, a hefty sum back in 1993.

“The school covered the costs. They invested. I learned scientific sports training,” Atilano said.

High from his experience, he made a bold prediction: “The first Olympic gold will come from weightlifting in Zamboanga City.”

Atilano immediately started going to work. One of his first moves was looking for younger talent. Because of his international exposure, he learned that world-class weightlifters began training as young as 8 years old. Filipino weightlifters back then typically started training in high school; too late in the game. Atilano convinced UZ to make an extension program to cater to youngsters who weren’t enrolled in the school. With the blessing of the Department of Education, he started training elementary students.

The program had been around for a few years when Diaz, who was 10 years old at the time, found that she had a knack for lifting. She began playing around with makeshift barbells made from ipil-ipil wood fitted with mag wheels or poured concrete. Her first coach was her cousin Catalino Diaz, who was already part of the UZ extension program. Catalino decided to bring her to Atilano. The coach was looking for female lifters to train, another strategy to succeed internationally, but few girls were interested in the sport.

“People said, ‘Don’t do that, that’s for men. Women should stay at home.’ They'll say you're an Amazon, a macho person. I got embarrassed. My mother told me no one would like me if I did weightlifting. So growing up as a girl I was insecure with my muscles.”
—
Hidilyn Diaz, Olympic Gold Medalist

Atilano recalls meeting Diaz for the first time.

“I tested her. She was structurally fit for weightlifting. She could do full squats, and you could see her arms really lock, like the letter V,” Atilano said. “I said, ‘Yeah, she’s qualified.’”

At first, Atilano didn’t set high expectations for Diaz. He told her cousin to give Hidilyn the beginners program, expecting her to drop out within a week or two. Instead, Diaz did not miss a single training session for six months.

“She was never absent. She was really interested,” Atilano said.

But it wasn’t just determination that Diaz needed to keep up with training. To get to a local gym some 15 kilometers from home, she had to cough up P50 for the roundtrip fare, a considerable sum given the modest income of her family. Diaz resorted to selling vegetables and fish, and washing jeepneys to earn extra money. Seeing her struggle, Atilano eventually gave Diaz her own Olympic bar and weights so she could train in their backyard.

There were gender stereotypes to deal with as well. Hidilyn’s own mother, albeit supportive, used to warn her about bulking up due to weightlifting. It wasn’t lady-like, she said, and could drive away potential suitors.

“People said, ‘Don’t do that, that’s for men. Women should stay at home.’ They'll say you're an Amazon, a macho person. I got embarrassed. My mother told me no one would like me if I did weightlifting. So growing up as a girl I was insecure with my muscles,” Diaz said.

But through it all, she persevered, in no small part because of the support and mentorship of Atilano and his wife Cecilia, a former weightlifter and Southeast Asian Games medalist herself. Diaz had found a role model and a viable path to success.

Hidilyn was soon offered a high school scholarship at UZ. Soon, she was blazing through local and national competitions. The local government extended support, shouldering the cost of transportation, providing allowance, and supplying uniforms for out-of-town meets. At the tender age of 13, Diaz became a member of the national team.

Diaz still speaks highly of her city’s sports program. With fellow Zamboangeño Marcial taking home bronze in the last Summer Games, and high jumper Simeon Toribio snagging the country’s second medal, a bronze, in Munich back in 1932, the city now has four out of 14 Philippine Olympic medals to its name, the most for any municipality.

“There were many promising athletes there. They held annual summer games, where athletes hone their skills. On top of that, the Zamboanga city government supported the kids. They paid for water, shoes, clothes, cycling shorts — the complete set,” Diaz said.

Diaz deserves credit for fighting through adversity, but being born in a place with a functioning weightlifting program was the luck of the draw. The city had a bona fide weightlifting coach, a university that offered scholarships for weightlifting (one of only three in the country at the time), and a local government that supported its athletes.

“Our grassroots sports programs are very localized. They’re not coordinated at the national level, unlike in other countries. There are local leaders who say, ‘We’re a small municipality with very limited funding. Instead of spending on sports, we’d rather spend on agriculture and housing.’”
—
Anthony Divinagracia, sports journalist and political science lecturer

But not all localities are the same. Sports journalist and political science lecturer Anthony Divinagracia said in an interview that grassroots sports development in the Philippines was uneven, and could rise and fall on the manna of local governments or worse, individual politicians.

“Our grassroots sports programs are very localized. They’re not coordinated at the national level, unlike in other countries,” explained Divinagracia. “There are local leaders who say, ‘We’re a small municipality with very limited funding. Instead of spending on sports, we’d rather spend on agriculture and housing.’ [Their grassroots sports program] is not prioritized.”

The Palarong Pambansa, organized by the Department of Education, is one mechanism to promote grassroots sports from the top. But the annual competition for student-athletes has been plagued with problems, too, mostly stemming from a lack of support both from the national and local levels. A glance at the budget of the Palaro reveals that funding has largely been stagnant since 2015, dropping further in 2020 and 2021 presumably because of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, another national youth sports competition, Batang Pinoy, has not been held since 2018. Unlike the Palarong Pambansa, Batang Pinoy also involved out-of-school youth, further extending the reach of grassroots sports. It also had events like weightlifting that were not included in the Palaro. Hidilyn’s first competition ever was at the Batang Pinoy games held in Puerto Princesa in 2002.

Filipino boxing medalists Carlo Paalam, Eumir Marcial, and Nesthy Petecio. Photo: Eumir Marcial/Instagram

Ticket out of poverty

But certain sports can thrive even with limited supervision. A beloved sports at the grassroots is boxing, with basketball perhaps its only rival in terms of popularity. This is especially true in central and southern Philippines, which has produced some of our finest boxers, the likes of which include Flash Elorde of Cebu, Onyok Velasco of Negros Occidental, and of course, Manny Pacquiao of General Santos City. Every single one of our Tokyo 2020 boxing medalists hailed from Mindanao.

The prevalence of boxing in many parts of the country reveals an important reality. In impoverished areas, grassroots sports is a deeply socioeconomic phenomenon, seen as a way to improve one’s standing in life.

Marcial, Petecio, and Paalam famously joined local amateur matches as children, earning anything between P100 to P500 per fight. All born into poverty, the promise of financial reward was an important motivation for getting into sport.

Paalam, who moved from town to town in Mindanao with his family in search of greener pastures, had an exceptionally difficult childhood. As a boy, he had to hustle constantly to eat, diving for loose change flung by tourists at a pier, selling peanuts at a bus station, pilfering vegetables, and finally, picking garbage at the city dump in Cagayan de Oro after relocating there with his father. He experienced all this before turning 7.

On the way home from the landfill one day, barefoot, Carlo passed by the backyard of a neighbor who was training his son to box. Scared by what he saw, he tried to scuttle away into an alley, but was roped in by the neighbor for a little sparring session with his kid anyway. His boxing career had begun.

“I really didn’t like boxing at first. I was forced to wear gloves and fight the kid. He beat me up, but his father saw that I was fearless and I had the potential. That’s how I started,” Carlo recalled.

Soon he was joining every amateur contest he could, including “Boxing in the Park,” a popular event held in the city every week. With his first-prize money, Carlo bought his family some rice and a P3 ice cream stick for himself, the first time he could ever afford the sweet treat.

Afraid he would be told to stop, he lied to his father Rio about the source of the money in the beginning, saying it all came from working at the landfill. But Rio eventually found out, catching his son in action at one of his matches. A neighbor had told him a certain “Paalam” was fighting at the boxing tournament, and that Paalam was certainly not him.

Stepping down from the ring after earning a victory, aware that his father had been watching, Carlo asked for his blessing right then and there. Rio relented.

“I told him, ‘Let me do it, Papa. I’ll take care of myself and I’ll bring us out of poverty,’” Carlo said.

Officials would eventually take Carlo under their wings, giving him a slot in a local boxing program. He was given a monthly allowance of P500-P1,000, board and lodging, and support for schooling. Grassroots boxing has endured under this system for decades, giving rise to an ecosystem of benefactors, coaches, athletes, and administrators at the local level.

"I really didn’t like boxing at first. I was forced to wear gloves and fight the kid. He beat me up, but his father saw that I was fearless and I had the potential. That’s how I started."
—
Carlo Paalam, Olympic silver medalist in boxing

Local politicians and businessmen, especially in the Visayas and Mindanao, often support “stables” of athletes who compete in local competitions, in the hopes of finding the next breakout star, Divinagracia said.

But this is unsustainable, he added. Without deliberate support and coordination on a national level, the boxing model is hard to replicate in other disciplines, especially emerging ones. Often, patronage becomes the main driver of grassroots sports. This ties the system to the political fortunes of local executives who seem to use sports as a way of boosting their profiles.

Without an institutionalized support system, many young athletes who risk everything also fall through the cracks.

“Aspiring kids see their boxing idols live good lives, Manny Pacquiao for example, when he turned professional. Some stop going to school, and their parents even encourage that. But not everyone who turns pro is lucky. Others slide deeper into poverty or even die,” Divinagracia said.

One way of widening support at the grassroots is through athletic scholarships. After scouting for stand-out talent in youth competitions, the transition to being a subsidized member of the national team is not always immediate or guaranteed. In the meantime, athletes need support, since many of them come from underprivileged backgrounds.

Athletic scholarships fill that gap, a way of sustaining young athletes as they continue their progress into elite competitors. But these are not easy to come by. Competition is stiff, funding for less popular sports is limited, and schools offering scholarships are concentrated in Metro Manila and other major urban areas. Crucially, a majority of higher education institutions are also private, a staggering 88 percent, putting them beyond the reach of public funding.

“Athletes who are scouted by good high schools or colleges are lucky. They get free food, their needs are paid for, they get scholarships and all that. But not all get to that level. So what happens to you?” Divinagracia said.

Although finding the best talent naturally involves a culling process, a comprehensive basic sports program places adequate safety nets for those who don’t go all the way. Providing quality, continuing education for young athletes makes a huge difference in protecting them, and also encourages a wider population to give sports a try.

While grassroots sports is the starting point for developing elite competitors, this is not its only purpose. In fact, it may not even be its most important function. Sports is a social investment. It promotes the holistic development of the youth, encourages peace and understanding among diverse communities, and instills important values like discipline, excellence, teamwork, sportsmanship, fair play, and solidarity.

And yes, it is also an opportunity to rise out of poverty, even if you don’t reach the pinnacle of success. As Diaz explained, the beginning of her sports career was about necessity.

“The truth is, I went into sports because the school gave me a scholarship. I wanted to finish school. That was it. I didn’t even know the Olympics existed.”

Diaz would learn about this most prestigious sporting event soon enough. Her long road to victory was only beginning.

Her knees buckled. And then she fell. Lying diagonally at the edge of the platform, she stayed on her back for a moment, eyes closed and with an expression of torment on her face.

It was the 2012 London Olympics, and Hidilyn Diaz had just failed her clean and jerk attempt in spectacular fashion.

London was Hidilyn’s second Summer Games. Four years ago, she joined her first-ever Olympics in Beijing via wildcard, a chance given to athletes whose proven abilities were not yet at the standard otherwise required. It was kind of a gift, and Hidilyn admits she didn’t take those Games very seriously. As a 17 year-old, she was dazzled by the bright lights, more interested in taking photos with her sports idols than actually competing. She finished 10th out of 11 competitors.

Despite the poor finish, Diaz was enraptured.

“I was amazed. Every time I saw big-name athletes, they’re my idol, I took pictures. I only saw them in magazines,” Hidilyn confessed.

London however, was a different affair. Having been given the honor of carrying the Philippine flag for the opening ceremonies, Hidilyn knew expectations were running high.

That all came crashing down at the ExCel London on July 30, 2012. She failed all three of her clean and jerk attempts, registering a “Did Not Finish” (DNF) result. As she stepped off the platform, Hidilyn shook her head and bit her lip. Her coach mercifully threw a towel over her head to save her the embarrassment of crying in front of the camera. This time, she finished dead last among 17 competitors.

“I cried for two weeks. I got a zero,” she said. After everything I worked for, all the training I went through, I couldn’t execute properly. But that’s how it was. The Olympics is different. The pressure was so intense.”

Representing the country on the world stage is both a privilege and an enormous burden. By then, Hidilyn had already been a national athlete for eight years, a product of an elite sports program that aimed to show the rest of the world the best of what Filipinos could do.

It takes many things to get that right: excellent sports governance, adequate facilities, coach development, international exposure, cutting-edge sports science and innovation, career support, and of course, money to grease the entire operation.

Let’s start with the good. Hidilyn’s exposure to the Olympics at an early age was a definite boon to her career. Journalist and former karateka Gretchen Malalad, a three-time SEA Games gold medalist, explained why competing at the highest level is essential to an athlete’s growth.

“Even if she lost her first two Olympics appearances, at least she was able to compete on the world stage. She was exposed to the elite athletes’ level of competition and saw what she needed to make up for,” Malalad said.

Most of our delegates to the last Olympics were already winners of international competitions. But international exposure also means training overseas with better coaches, technologies, and facilities.

“I mean I love my coaches but, what they taught me, it’s not enough. If you really want to improve, you need to be exposed to world-class caliber [coaches] and world-class training.”
—
Gretchen Malalad, former national team karateka

Hidilyn had been to weightlifting powerhouse China twice even before her first Olympic Games. This was followed by even more training visits in subsequent years. To prepare for Tokyo 2020, our boxing team trained in Thailand under the watchful eye of an Australian coach. Pole vaulter EJ Obiena has been in Italy since 2014 with a Ukrainian mentor, while gymnast Carlos Yulo, who has a Japanese coach, has been based in Tokyo since 2016.

Malalad herself prepared in Italy for six months prior to the 2005 SEA Games under the mentorship of an Italian world karate champion. It was an invaluable experience.

“I mean I love my coaches but, what they taught me, it’s not enough. If you really want to improve, you need to be exposed to world-class caliber [coaches] and world-class training,” Malalad said.

It’s a privilege to be chosen for one of these trips, even for full-fledged members of the Philippine team. For starters, it’s costly. Malalad’s training overseas with three other national athletes was not paid for by the government but by a private sponsor, San Miguel Corp.

Even then, the money wasn’t enough. To stretch out their training as long as they could, the team stayed in a scrubby and dangerous neighborhood in Naples, one of the poorest cities in Europe, where rent was affordable. Their Italian coach helped them with their expenses, but Malalad and the others felt the need to look for jobs themselves.

“We were embarrassed. Our coach was already shouldering most of our training expenses, and we needed money to buy food and other essentials,” Malalad said.

The men tried working as dishwashers and cleaners at a restaurant, but had to quit when the heavy workload affected their training. Malalad picked up the slack. She took a job at a computer shop called Skynet that was frequented by African migrants and became a part-time tutor for migrant children.

“I remember, every Friday, I would get my pay and go to the grocery store to buy food for the team. I felt so happy. I was like a mom,” Malalad recounted.

The whole experience was grueling but worth it. Malalad won gold while the rest of the team also clinched medals in the 2005 SEA Games.

The advantage of international exposure can also be inferred from another quintessential feature of our elite sports representation: the Filipino diaspora. From basketball to football, athletics, swimming, and combat sports, we have been recruiting dual and naturalized citizens to the national teams for decades.

Filipinos have never been loath to welcome anyone under the flag, no matter how distant the connection and despite some criticism of the strategy. Five of our delegates to Tokyo 2020 were from this diaspora, and no less than two naturalized or dual-citizen Filipinos living abroad were part of each of our last four Olympic teams. This is worth noting for what it reveals: an edge for athletes trained or based overseas, where they have access to top coaches, the latest in sports science and innovation, and state-of-the-art facilities.

“There are those who say it is a band aid solution, and it’s not good because it displaces local athletes,” said political science professor Anthony Divinagracia. “But I don’t have a problem with it, because it raises the level of play. They have a different skill set because they are trained abroad. There’s a transfer of technology.”

In the Philippines, it’s difficult to even get a precise number of functioning sports facilities. We filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests at the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), but its response was limited. On the number of sports complexes in the country, the PSC identified a mere five, “to name a few.” These were the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex in Manila, the New Clark City Sports Hub, and one each in Bacolod, Davao, and Tagum City. This was clearly far from being a comprehensive list, as it did not even include the PhilSports Complex or Ultra in Pasig, where the PSC’s own office is located.

FOI requests on the number of regulation swimming pools, track ovals, and football pitches in the country got the same, narrow reply. A common sentiment in the sports community is that good training facilities in the country were lacking, and many of those that exist, particularly in the provinces, were in dire need of repair and maintenance. 

A question of money

Hidilyn herself had to knuckle down in the decades-old weightlifting gym at Rizal Memorial after flaming out of the London Olympics. But further struggles came. In 2014, Hidilyn suffered a serious knee injury and failed to qualify for the Asian Games, putting her Olympic dreams in doubt. Critics began saying she was washed up. She sorted through the same emotions herself, spiraling into depression.

“I was physically, emotionally, mentally drained, and my performance was no good. I told myself I was a loser, a has-been,” Hidilyn recounted.

But in what has become a theme in her career, Hidilyn dug her way out of the quicksand. She decided to overhaul her conditioning program and dropped down to the 53 kg division. It proved to be a masterstroke. She started winning again. After a string of podium finishes in international competition, Hidilyn slowly rebuilt her confidence. In 2016, she was back at the Olympics.

In Rio de Janeiro, she finished strong. Hidilyn clinched silver, ending a 20-year medal drought for the Philippines. Back home, she became an overnight sensation.

“I was shocked when the airplane landed. Why were there so many people? They swarmed around me. We’re not used to that (as athletes), because we just train and compete,” she said. “ I realized that it was more than just a medal. There was a deeper meaning to it.”

Having proven herself on the world stage, Hidilyn immediately set her sights on Tokyo. But crossing the divide between gold and silver was not going to be easy. Hidilyn admitted she did not expect to place second in Rio, ready to settle for bronze instead. But the disastrous performance of a Chinese rival, who, like Hidilyn back in 2012, registered a DNF result, moved her up the ranking.

Hidilyn could not let her fate rest on the poor showing of opponents if she wanted to win gold. By 2020, she would be four years older and facing younger competition (it turned out to be five years older, since the Olympics got delayed by a year). Hidilyn looked at the odds and made a candid assessment: she was not going to win without making important changes. Pursuing those changes would be harder than she thought.

It boils down to money: how much or how little of it we allocate to sports. Countries that spend more on elite sports perform better on the world stage, research confirms. De Bosscher, Shibil, and Westerbeek (2015) found that 68% of a nation’s success at the Summer Olympics can be explained by absolute investment in elite sports. This is a substantial association for a single determinant. However, unlike macroeconomic figures like wealth and population, transnational comparisons of sports expenditure can be tricky. This is because spending definitions and delivery mechanisms vary considerably from nation to nation. In the study, significant methodological adjustments and fine-tuning were required to make meaningful comparisons between 15 sample countries.

In other words, there are many models for funding sports. For example, unlike other leading Olympic nations, the US does not have a government funded sports agency. National governing bodies get money from corporate sponsors and broadcast rights agreements — although some groups have been requesting for government help of late. On the other hand, rival China has adopted a state-driven strategy to international sporting competitions. This approach stands on firm financial backing. In 2016 for example, China’s General Administration of Sports (GASC) received $651million in government funding. This was 25 times the budget of the Philippines in 2021 (US and China were not part of the 2015 study).

In the Philippines, money for elite sports comes from a combination of government funds and corporate sponsorship. Here, there are encouraging developments. The budget of the PSC, the country’s sports agency, grew significantly in the last two years. Excluding 2019, an outlier because of the country’s hosting of the SEA Games, PSC budgets for 2020 and 2021 were each five to six times greater than where it was in 2018. In those two years, P750 million was allocated to preparation, training, and participation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, roughly a third of the allotment.

View this graphic in an interactive format: ANATOMY OF GOLD

PSC also receives remittances from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO). Under Republic Act 6847, the law that created the PSC, Pagcor is mandated to turn over 5% of its gross income to the government sports agency. Likewise, PCSO should remit 30% of the proceeds of six sweepstakes or lottery draws per annum. However, Pagcor has only been contributing 2.1%of its gross income since 1993 on the strength of a memorandum order from then President Fidel Ramos, supposedly to address the energy crisis at the time. The PCSO has also been accused of not remitting its full share since 2006.

Private funding is more difficult to track and quantify because of the scarcity of publicly available documents. Sponsors can go directly to an athlete, or more commonly, through the fund-raising efforts of national sports associations or NSAs: autonomous, nongovernment organizations that have control over the governance, promotion, and development of their sport.

One of the benchmarks of success of NSAs is how much corporate sponsorships they have raised. But they also receive varying subsidies from the government, ostensibly based on performance and need. In its approved outlay for 2021, the PSC had line-item budgets of P8.7 million for the Philippine Bowling Federation, P3 million for the Samahang Kickboxing ng Pilipinas, and P10 million each for the Philippine Football Federation and the Samahang Basketbolista ng Pilipinas.

The PSC is also responsible for giving a monthly allowance to national athletes and coaches. Athletes receive anything between P10,000 to P45,000 depending on their category, which is determined by their success in international competition. For national team members who train almost year round and have no other means of support, this is their lifeline. They rely on the allowance not just for training and living expenses, but in many cases, to support their families. When the allowance suddenly dries up, it can cause a major disruption.

“It’s hard to focus on preparations for the Olympics when you know your family in the province is starving. It hurts to think about it when you’re the only one they depend on.”
—
Irish Magno, Olympian

That was what happened earlier this year when the subsidy was delayed for two months. In March, elite boxer Irish Magno caused a stir when she revealed her desperate situation in a now-deleted Facebook post.

“It’s hard to focus on preparations for the Olympics when you know your family in the province is starving,” she wrote in Filipino. “It hurts to think about it when you’re the only one they depend on. There has been no allowance for two months. That’s the only thing we athletes have been relying on. I hope it’s released soon.”

Later, Marcial spoke out in support of his teammate, who apparently got in trouble for her disclosure. “When we speak out it comes across as bad. Irish Magno was asked to delete her post,” Marcial also wrote on Facebook. “It brings down morale because we’re doing everything we can to win the gold medal but we’re not getting enough support.”

When it was his turn to get piled on, Marcial did not shrink back. The middleweight boxer explained that even when it arrived on time, their full allowance as national team members was not enough, especially for the lofty goals expected of them.

“You think an allowance of P43,000 a month is enough to prepare for the Olympics? Do you think I can rely on that for plane tickets, accommodation, food, coaching staff, supplements, masseur, etc.? Everything I mentioned was provided by private sponsors and of course my own money,” he wrote in another post.

To augment their income, some athletes enlist with the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Coast Guard while training for the national team. There, they earn a salary based on rank. Five of our Tokyo 2020 delegates, including all four medalists, are members of the uniformed services, earning between P29,000 to P31,000 a month. Being enlisted also provides athletes the security of a job after they’ve retired from the national team, when their peak years are behind them.

All this raises an important point: it’s expensive to be an elite athlete. The odds are stacked against those from modest backgrounds who don’t have the resources or support system to fund their training. Using enlistment as a proxy for evaluating socioeconomic status, only 32% to 38% of the Philippine delegation belonged to the uniformed services in the past four editions of the Summer Games. They are usually clustered around boxing, weightlifting, and athletics. This confirms that more elite athletes come from middle- to upper-class backgrounds despite representing a narrow slice of the population.

The PSC released the allowance it owed athletes days after Magno’s protestations. Hurt feelings between Marcial and boxing officials soon simmered down. Although harmony was restored, the episode gave a rare glimpse into the frustrations felt by members of the national team. As Malalad intimated, athletes were often hesitant to speak up.

“Athletes usually don’t complain. They’re scared of being picked on. What if they are no longer given opportunities?” Malalad said. 

Team HD: Hidilyn Diaz (center) with Coach Kaiwen Gao, Dr. Karen Trinidad, Coach Jeaneth Aro, and Coach Julius Naranjo.
Photo: Hidilyn Diaz/Facebook

Political patronage in sports

As she gained newfound influence following a podium finish in Tokyo, Hidilyn also found her voice. In mid-2018, she started assembling a team around her to focus on developing small details of her game. She was struggling against the law of diminishing returns; the smallest improvements required a lot more effort to achieve. But this is what elite sports are all about — an extra millimeter, one less millisecond, one more kilogram. “Team HD,” as it would later be called, started to take shape, composed of technical coach Gao Kaiwen from China, strength and conditioning coach Julius Naranjo from Guam (also Hidilyn’s partner), nutritionist Jeaneth Aro, and sports psychologist Karen Trinidad.

The Asian Games in Jakarta, a short two months away, would be the nascent team’s first test. Trailing Turkmenistan’s Kristina Shermetova by a kilogram after the snatch, Hidilyn took the lead with a 115 kg lift in the clean and jerk. Shermatova needed to lift 116 kg in her last attempt to edge Diaz out. She failed.

Hidilyn won. But behind the scenes, her nerves were showing. It was the same sport, but a different game.

“It was pressure for me for how many months,” Hidilyn was quoted after the competition. “At the Olympics no one expected me to win but at the Asian Games everyone expected me to win a medal, a gold medal. For months I couldn’t sleep, my training got ruined but with positive people surrounding me I got through it.”

A month later, back in the Philippines, Hidilyn tussled with Samahang Weightlifter ng Pilipinas (SWP) president and Bacolod Representative Monico Puentevella. In a scathing letter addressed to the PSC, Hidilyn vented her frustration over the state of weightlifting in the country. She accused Puentevella of not having a “strategic plan” and “long-term program” for athletes under their NSA. She challenged him to undergo an election process.

“I expected a lot of changes in weightlifting but sadly I saw some people who only use weightlifting for their own benefits and not for the benefits (sic) of our sports and athletes,” she wrote.

She wanted more support for her training and preparation. She fought to keep Gao, a proven high-caliber coach who Hidilyn believed could guide her all the way to gold. But the idea of a national athlete forming her own team seemed too cocky for the bureaucracy.

“(Sic) I had to endure several personal prejudice and criticisms from different sectors. I was immediately judged as ‘LumakiangUlo’ (swellheaded) and ‘mayabang’ (arrogant) just because I requested for additional support and stated what I really need in training,” her letter read.

Puentevella shot back, saying Hidilyn was being used by rivals who wanted to oust him from power. He also called Hidilyn ungrateful.

“Where did she start? Who brought her to the Olympics? I did, right?" he said.

In the end, Puentevella stayed on as president of SWP, while Hidilyn was able to keep Gao as her official coach. The two did not speak to each other for months, but their relationship gradually improved.

Unfortunately, Hidilyn’s burgeoning public profile also came with unexpected baggage. In early 2019, palace officials tagged her in a supposed plot to oust the president. The bizarre episode had Hidilyn fearing for her safety and that of her family back in Zamboanga. It also made her a target of attacks from the most hardcore supporters of the administration, who apparently believed the accusation without proof.

The incident only made it harder for Hidilyn to find support for her continuous training. For eight months, Naranjo, Hidilyn’s second coach, rendered his services for free. Every time she would request for a salary, she would get snide remarks from officials.

“Sports officials themselves bullied me, asking, ‘Where’s your sweetheart?’” She recounted. “Of course, I couldn’t foot the bill all the time. He helped a lot and that’s how he’s treated? The guy also has his needs.”

To pay for the services of Naranjo and her nutritionist, two core members of her team, Hidilyn made an appeal on social media. In an Instagram story, she wondered aloud if she could ask private companies to support her bid for gold. The president’s defenders, who were already suspicious of Hidilyn, saw it as another attempt to embarrass the government. The attacks intensified.

Training at Rizal Memorial at the height of the controversies, the champion weightlifter looked visibly troubled. “It’s hard to say publicly what we need. I’m already a silver medalist and I find it hard to speak out,” she said. “You can’t win in the Olympics just like that. I need to fight for other athletes. Because they’re afraid to speak up.”

But in the end, her gamble paid off. Hidilyn clinched substantial funding from organizations like the Udenna Group of businessman Dennis Uy and the MVP Sports Foundation of PLDT Chairman Manny Pangilinan. It was a huge boost for Team HD. Later, Gao would persuade Diaz to train overseas, away from the stress and distractions of Metro Manila.

View this graphic in an interactive format: ANATOMY OF GOLD

There is no prescription for how much money countries should spend on their elite sports programs or individual athletes. Hidilyn estimates the cost of her preparation from 2019 to 2021 at P15 million, putting the price of her gold medal at about P5 million per year.

According to Hidilyn, about 60% of that was shouldered by the government while 40% came from the private sector.

It’s not just the deep pockets of corporate sponsors that make them attractive partners, but their expediency as well. Once they take you under their wing, there is less red tape to deal with, unlike government checks that can take a long time to get signed and released. Without sponsors, Hidilyn said she typically spent her own money for things like hotel bookings and plane tickets and hoped it would get reimbursed later.

Needless to say, there is also a downside to relying on private money. For one, corporate sponsors are under no obligation to fund any athlete, and may pick and choose whom to support and when.

“Private sponsors stepped up in the last Olympics. Funding and support became more consistent,” Divinagracia acknowledged. “But some private sponsors are too business-minded. They would say ‘no result, no trophy, sorry we will just cut the sponsorship.’”

Veteran sports broadcaster and academic Sev Sarmenta agreed that private money is fickle. But he also believed that the big funders would stick around for now.

“Until we can come up with a better way of financing our athletes we will have to turn to private sector support,” he said. “I have faith in them. I think it’s good public relations, it’s good community relations for them to stay in sports. I think most of them are interested in Filipinos winning in the Olympics and other events as well.”

Unfortunately, whether it’s in the form of government subsidy or corporate sponsorship, sports financing often has less to do with the athletes, and more on the dynamics of power in the sporting establishment. To understand why, we need to have a basic grasp of the local sports system.

View this graphic in an interactive format: ANATOMY OF GOLD

We’re already familiar with the PSC, created in 1990 as the exclusive policy-making and coordinating body for all amateur sports development programs and institutions in the Philippines. Standing shoulder to shoulder is the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC), a private, nongovernment organization recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as having the sole authority to represent Philippine athletes in the Olympic Games, the Asian Games, the SEA Games and other multi-event competitions.

The POC serves as the umbrella organization of all NSAs locally. All NSAs must also be affiliated with International Sports Federations (IFs) that govern their sport at the global level. These IFs are also recognized by the IOC.

Most countries that participate in established international sporting events operate under a similar public-private setup. National Olympic Committees (NOC) are designed to be autonomous to “resist all pressures of any kind, including but not limited to political, legal, religious or economic pressures,” according to the Olympic Charter. That is, at least in theory.

Although the POC is financially independent, member NSAs are not. Most NSAs remain totally reliant on, and therefore constrained by, the amount of subsidy they receive from the PSC. The POC already has 42 regular NSA members and 13 associate members representing a myriad of sports, and that list continues to grow. Without a proportional increase in the budget, funding becomes more and more competitive. This is where things can get tricky.

“Politics comes into play because there’s spending involved,” Sarmenta said.

An examination of the leadership of the different NSAs and the POC reveals that many of them are either incumbent politicians or belong to prominent political families. This wearing of multiple hats has become inevitable under a system where different sporting groups vie for funding and influence.

“In my view, there should be no politicians there,” Divinagracia said. “But in several instances, these politicians have proved that their influence helped secure government funds and support. Because they’re in power and have money, they can chip in from their own pockets, right?”

But in other cases, politics gets in the way of what’s best for the sport. Divinagracia recalled an incident when a newly elected NSA president terminated all sponsorship deals arranged during the term of a bitter rival. No explanation was given. A new sponsor who offered to support the NSA was also rejected.

“The new president said, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘This businessman.’ ‘I don’t like him.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because he’s our political nemesis, so it’s a no-go.’” Divinagracia said.

The same power play occurred when soliciting government funds.

“If you’re an NSA, you can ask for money from the Philippine Sports Commission. But you need to be endorsed by the POC. What if the POC does not want to endorse you because you have issues with them? You won’t get anything,” Divinagracia said.

Worst of all, athletes become collateral damage in the constant struggle between warring factions within the sporting establishment.

“That does not mean I don’t love the Philippines. I have good memories from there. But I did not have the connections needed to succeed in that culture.”
—
Wesley So, Filipino chess prodigy and US citizen

When chess prodigy Wesley So officially became a US citizen in February, extinguishing any hope that he could be persuaded to come back to the Philippines, the pervasive system of patronage was a particular reason he cited for leaving. Filipinos heaved a sigh of regret as the US Chess Federation published a photo of the Cavite native — a small American flag on his right hand and his citizenship papers on his left, unmistakable marks of his new allegiance.

In an interview with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, So, one of the best chess masters in the world and arguably the best Filipino player ever, said he just couldn’t make it in the local sports system.

“That does not mean I don’t love the Philippines. I have good memories from there. But I did not have the connections needed to succeed in that culture,” he said.

While So has not shared the specifics of his conflict with Philippine sports officials, he had previously expressed disappointment over being denied a P1-million incentive from the PSC and the POC after winning at the World Universiade Games in 2013.

In an email interview with Spin.ph arranged by his adoptive mother Lotis Key back when he was still a Filipino citizen, So’s criticism was blistering.

“To be poor and unconnected in the Philippines is to be trash for rich people to step on,” So said. “I am a true Filipino who cares about the future of Filipino children growing up in an endless cycle of corruption and zero opportunity. My heart aches for talented people there who because of poverty haven’t any hope for their futures.”

POC President Bambol Tolentino, who was elected to the position in 2019, readily admitted that local sports is mired in politics. He insisted however that reforms were being made.

“The old boys’ club was there when I came. There’s politics, and it’s dirty,” he said. “But we went past that, with the other groups that believe in good governance and transparency.”

Tolentino, a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, has been a congressman since 2013. Prior to Congress, he was mayor of Tagaytay for nine years. As a firmly established politician, Tolentino was candid about the advantages his position and connections brought to the POC.

“All our requests were granted [by the national government]. Well maybe, because I’m in Congress, so I know the ins and outs of their budget,” he said.

“Like those pledges [from companies], I personally talk with them. [We get] a big appropriation with just a text message, a phone call.”

We tried to interview the leadership of the PSC for this story but they did not respond to our requests.

Sarmenta observed that there seemed to be a good engagement between the POC and PSC at the moment, something that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Ramirez and Tolentino are known allies of the Duterte administration.

“It’s personality-based. There were years when the PSC and the Philippine Olympic Committee did not see eye to eye. Because PSC has the money bags, they took care of funding. When they were at odds with the POC president and the different NSAs, the funding would stop,” Sarmenta explained.

Doubtless, a historic Olympic performance helps smoothen the relationship.

“When we start winning, there’s no acrimony, right? But there were so many years when we had no medals to take home. When we lose, there’s a lot of blame to go around,” Sarmenta said. 

Cavite Rep. Abraham Tolentino is the president of the Philippine Olympic Committee. Photo: Philippine Sportswriters Association

National Sports Academy

Despite the weaknesses in the local sports system, Sarmenta believes the present model will have to work for now. A particular development he looked forward to is the newly established National Academy of Sports or NAS, a government-run public high school with a curriculum focused on sports. NAS was established on June 9, 2020, and is an attached institution of the Department of Education. Its main campus is in the New Clark City Sports Complex in Capas, Tarlac. NAS has launched a nationwide search for scholars for its inaugural school year.

“The concept is to have athletes go to school and study while being trained. They are the ones who have been selected from the grassroots program.” Sarmenta said. “If the seeds are planted correctly, we can make harvests quite well into the future.”

The idea is not new and has been used in other countries to great effect, the La Finca boxing academy in Cuba being a prime example. But the NAS also harks back to the Gintong Alay program of the 1980s under the administration of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Back then, talented student-athletes were housed in a training facility in Baguio where they also attended school. While Gintong Alay eventually expanded to include multiple sports, the program initially focused on track and field, a medal-rich sport with several disciplines.

One of the famous alumni of the program is Elma Muros-Posadas, also known as the “Long Jump Queen,” and winner of an impressive 15 SEA Games gold medals. She’s now a coach and grassroots coordinator for the PSC.

Elma recalled her days of training in the summer capital of the Philippines, surrounded by a battery of coaches and specialists, both local and foreign. The program was run by Michael Keon, a nephew of Marcos who also served an overlapping tenure as president of the POC. Keon is now mayor of Laoag, Ilocos Norte.

“We were really focused on competing, training, sleeping, studying, performance, that’s it. Sir Mike told us not to think of anything else,” Elma recounted. “He even took care of our family. He said, ‘I will even help your family with their medical treatments. So even when they got sick, we couldn’t go home to the province.”

For Elma, who hails from the small town of Magdiwang, Romblon and was only a teenager at the time, the comprehensive support from Gintong Alay allowed her to focus on training with minimal distractions. On one occasion, Elma’s parents were brought to Baguio for a week so they could visit their daughter during a rough patch. The program paid for everything.

“We were happy because our parents didn’t have to pay for lodging and meals. We didn’t care about money, as long as we were provided for and we didn’t have to think about anything else except for studying, training and competing.”

Gintong Alay found noteworthy success, at least in regional competitions like the SEA Games. The country finished second overall in 1983, and third in 1985 and 1987. We also brought home several gold medals from the Asiad and Asian Athletics Championships, six of them courtesy of Lydia de Vega, another Gintong Alay alumnus who was considered Asia’s fastest woman in the 1980s.

Despite its achievements, Gintong Alay may be considered the ultimate expression of patronage politics in local sports. It was the program of a regime that exerted total control over the nation and carefully managed its image overseas. Notwithstanding rumored internal struggles, Keon, the dictator’s nephew, had easy access to funding and support for the program, and was presumably empowered to direct all of its affairs. It would be imprudent to evaluate Gintong Alay outside of the events and political climate at the time. The program ended in February 1986 following the ouster of President Marcos from power.

Grit forged in adversity

A few months away from the Olympics, and with a pandemic rampaging around the world, sports fans would see vignettes of Hidilyn’s non-stop training through her Instagram and YouTube channel, which she updated regularly. She had been stuck in Malaysia for months because of movement restrictions, and had to get creative with her workouts. In one video, she was sprinting up a parking ramp. In another, she was doing overhead squats using a bamboo pole and two large water containers as weights. It was a familiar scene. Twenty years since she started lifting, Hidilyn was back to improvising.

Hidilyn and her two coaches eventually found a home with a local weightlifting official, who graciously renovated the garage of his mother-in-law’s house in Melaka to turn it into a makeshift gym. The small space was all Hidilyn needed. She got down to work, her daily workouts punctuated by clucking hens and the intermittent putter of passing motorcycles.

She would complete the rest of her training in this rural village, far from home, before flying to Tokyo for the Olympics. Her coaches said Hidilyn was in the best shape of her career. The friendship of our Southeast Asian neighbors and her never-give-up attitude had saved the day. After she left, a tarpaulin emblazoned with Hidilyn’s photo and the words “GOOD LUCK” still hung on one side of the garage.

In the world of sports where success is determined in unambiguous terms, it is still the intangibles that capture our imagination. Courage, grit, determination, puso (heart). These become powerful weapons in the hands of Filipino athletes who are forged in the fires of adversity, in a nation where sports is still a matter of survival for many.

But Hidilyn refused to romanticize her journey and chose to put things into perspective. “Having heart is not enough. Support is needed, preparation is needed for greatness to come out.”

During difficult times, and those times are frequent, it’s understandable for sports to take a back seat. We need to eat, stay safe, and keep a roof over our heads. But who would say sports, when done right, is not a worthy investment? Seldom can something have the power to raise an entire nation’s esteem, eclipse a hundred years of failure, and reduce a plague into a footnote.

As Hidilyn stepped into position for her winning lift, we didn’t know that feeling yet. But an immortal moment was within reach. She was about to seize it.