Batang Pinoy gold medalist wants to represent PHL in the future

Gymnast Haylee Garcia, 16 years old, won five gold medals on Monday in the 2024 Batang Pinoy tournament.

Garcia won gold in the individual all-around, balance beam, floor exercise, uneven bars, and the vault to complete a sweep of the senior women's artistic gymnastics event.

The pride of Pasig, who trained in Club Gymnastica before going to the United States, said she also wants to represent the Philippines eventually, just like Olympic gold medalist Carlos Yulo.

"I hope I can follow in his footsteps din po and I'm so happy that gymnastics is becoming more well-known in this country," Garcia told GMA News Online in an interview.

Garcia said she trained for Batang Pinoy for almost a year and the hard work was worth it.

"Sobrang tuwa po ako nung nakuha ko 'yun kasi pinaghirapan ko po 'yun eh," she said.

Before this victory, she also suffered an ACL injury last year and made it in time to recover.

"Yes. It was very hard to recover from it. I had to change my diet and my knee just did not feel the same anymore," Garcia said.

"So it was a long process. I had to do a lot of therapy and I had to be really careful with it but I still really wanted to compete. So me and Coach Van [Talingting] wanted to speed up the process so I made sure that I double time did my conditioning, my therapy and my stretching exercises so that it will be safe for me to compete," she said.

After a sweep of the Batang Pinoy gold medals, Garcia hopes to join the Southeast Asian Games next year.

"Hopefully we can come back next year in March to compete in [the] GAP Challenge and then after that I want to be able to join [the] SEA Games," she said.

Her mom Wilma, meanwhile, could not contain her happiness with her daughter's achievement.

"Of course, there's a very big part of it is nerbyos. But this girl is driven. So she really wants that Philippine flag on her leo," she said.

"So that's why she's working so hard. So let's see where this will take her. Ano lang naman tayo, 'di ba pag-parents? We just give support and make sure they're safe and okay."

—GMA Integrated News