Hidilyn not calling it quits

LONDON – The heartbreaker she suffered in her Olympic debut is not stopping Hidilyn Diaz from resuming training to gain another crack at a slot for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics where she vows to win a medal.

It took only a few minutes after she cried and cried over the bitter experience on stage that she said she wanted to make up for the London disaster in the next Olympics.

“I have failed the Filipino people. Everybody expected me to perform well here. I am not giving up. I will train even harder until I get a medal in Rio,” she said.

For the first time in her career which started with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Diaz didn’t score in competition. She failed in all her attempts at 118 kg in the clean and jerk and was disqualified to go any further in the 58kg event in weightlifting competition Monday at the Excel-Arena 3 inside the Olympic Park.

Diaz lifted 92 kilos in the snatch and did 97 kilos in the next round.

Monico Puentebella, president of the weightlifting association, was hinting Diaz should have started at 116 kilos and then moved up from there. Diaz said she and her coach Tony Agustin agreed on a starting lift of 118kg.

“I have been doing 123 kilos and I knew I could easily lift 118. But it was not what I expected,” said Diaz. “I don’t know why I couldn’t lift such a weight.”

Without blaming anybody for her failure, Diaz said she could not have performed well given the training she needed to achieve better results in London.

She said she had not undergone training abroad the way she did for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the Guangzhou Asian Games two years later. Her only stints abroad were in five international competitions where she earned the qualifying points for the Olympics.

The only foreign training she had was a one-month acclimatization in London courtesy of the host country for Class B athletes competing in the Olympics.

“It was very cold out there, it really didn’t help me in my final preparations,” she said.

The weather also put her at a disadvantage over her Western counterparts who are comfortable performing at 18-degree temperature.

She said a continuing training program specially under foreign coaches could also have helped her develop into a Class-A Olympic competitor. In London, Diaz was the second best-ranked in Group 2, whose standard entry weight is way below that in Group 1 where the eventual medalists compete.

The gold was eventually won by Chinese defending Olympic champion Li Xueng with a lift of 246, an Olympic record.

Diaz said she is willing to put on hold her computer studies at the Unibersidad de Zamboanga if given the chance and support for another Olympic bid.

She said the implementation of the sports priority program of the Philippine Sports Commission coud take some pressure off since part of the allowance of P40,000 assured by the funding agency could be shared with the families they are separated with while on training.